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Gone with the Wind (film)

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Gone with the Wind is a 1939 film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the same name. It went on to win 8 Academy Awards, and has been dubbed by the American Film Institute as the fourth greatest American film of the 20th Century. As of 2006, Gone With the Wind is the highest grossing film in box-office history, adjusted for inflation.See [http://www.filmsite.org/boxoffice.html]

Contents

Story

The story opens on a large cotton plantation named Tara in rural Georgia in 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War. Scarlett O’Hara, 16 years old, is the eldest of three daughters of the Irish immigrant Gerald O’Hara and his wife Ellen, and seemingly the attraction of every young man in the county, except the refined Ashley Wilkes, for whom Scarlett longs. She is upset to hear that Ashley’s engagement to his cousin Melanie Hamilton will be announced the next day at a barbecue at his family’s home, the nearby plantation Twelve Oaks.

At Twelve Oaks, she notices she is being admired by the handsome but roguish visitor Rhett Butler, who has been disowned by his Charleston family. When alone with Ashley, she confesses her love for him. He admits the qualities he finds attractive in Scarlett, but says that he and the gentle Melanie are more compatible. She slaps Ashley in anger, which is heightened when she realizes that Rhett has overhead the whole conversation. “Sir, you are no gentleman!” she protests, to which he replies, “And you, miss, are no lady!”

The barbecue is disrupted by the announcement that war has broken out, and the men rush to enlist. As Scarlett watches Ashley kiss Melanie goodbye, Melanie’s shy young brother Charles, with whom Scarlett had been innocently flirting, asks for her hand in marriage before he goes. She consents, they are married, and she is just as quickly widowed when Charles dies not in battle, but of influenza.

Ellen sends Scarlett to the Hamilton home in Atlanta to cheer her, although the O’Hara’s outspoken housemaid Mammy tells Scarlett she knows she is going there “like a spider” waiting for Ashley’s return. Scarlett and Melanie attend a charity ball in Atlanta, where Rhett makes a surprise appearance, now a heroic blockade runner for the Confederacy. Scarlett shocks the Atlanta gentry by accepting his bid to dance, even though she is still in mourning. While they dance, Rhett admits his intention of winning her, which she tells him will never happen.

The tide of war turns against the Confederacy, and Scarlett makes another appeal to Ashley’s heart while he is visiting on Christmas furlough. But nine months later, as the city is beseiged by the surrounding Union Army in the Battle of Atlanta, Melanie goes into a difficult labor, and Scarlett must deliver the child herself. Rhett appears with a horse and wagon to lead them out of the city, including a perilous ride through the burning warehouse district. He leaves her with a kiss on the road to Tara, which she repays with a slap, to his amusement, as he goes off to enlist with the Confederate Army.

On her journey back home, she finds Twelve Oaks burned out and deserted. She is relieved to find Tara still standing, but learns that her mother has just died, and Gerald’s mind has begun to slip away. With Tara pillaged of all its belongings by Union troops, and the fields untended, Scarlett vows she will do anything to let her family and herself survive: “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

Scarlett sets her family and servants to picking the cotton fields. She also fatally shoots a Union deserter who threatens her during a burglary, and finds gold coins in his haversack. With the defeat of the Confederacy and war's end, Ashley returns from being a prisoner of war, and Mammy must restrain Scarlett from running to him when he reunites with Melanie. The dispirited Ashley finds he is of little help to Tara, and when Scarlett begs him to flee with her, he confesses his desire for her and kisses her passionately, but says he cannot leave Melanie.

When Gerald dies after he is thrown from his horse while chasing a Yankee carpetbagger off his property, Scarlett is left to care for her family, and realizes she hasn’t the money to pay the taxes on Tara. She knows that Rhett is in Atlanta, and has Mammy make an elaborate gown for her from her mother’s drapes. But upon her visit, Rhett tells her his foreign bank accounts have been blocked, and that her offer to sell herself to him for the money has been in vain. As she departs, she encounters her sister’s fiancé, the middle-aged Frank Kennedy, who now owns a successful general store and lumber mill.

Soon Scarlett is Mrs. Frank Kennedy, and becomes a hard-headed businesswoman willing to trade with the despised Yankees, and use prison laborers in her mill. When Ashley is about to take a job offer with a bank in the north, Scarlett preys on his weakness by weeping that she needs him to help run the mill; and pressured by the sympathetic Melanie, he relents. One day, after Scarlett is attacked while driving alone through a nearby shantytown, Frank, Ashley, and others make a night raid on the shantytown. Ashley is wounded in a melee with Union troops, and Frank is killed.

With Frank’s funeral barely over, Rhett visits Scarlett and proposes marriage. Scarlett is aghast at his poor taste, but takes him up on his offer. After a honeymoon in New Orleans, Rhett promises to restore Tara, while Scarlett builds the biggest and most crassly opulant mansion in Atlanta. A daughter, Bonnie, is born to them, and Rhett adores her as a less spoiled version of her mother, and does everything to win the good opinion of Atlanta society for his daughter’s sake. Scarlett, still pining for Ashley, lets Rhett know that she wants no more children. In anger, he kicks open the door that separates their bedrooms to show her that he will decide that.

When visiting the mill one day, Scarlett listens to a nostalgic Ashley wish for the simpler days of old that are now gone, and when she consoles him with an embrace, they are spied by two gossips. Scarlett’s reputation is again sullied, but Melanie refuses to believe in the rumors, and invites her to Ashley’s birthday party. Afterwards, a drunken Rhett tells her he will make her forget Ashley, and sweeps her up the stairs in his arms, telling her, "This is one night you're not turning me out." She awakens the next morning with the look of guilty pleasure, but Rhett returns to apologize for his behavior, and offer a divorce. When he returns from a visit to London with Bonnie, Scarlett tells him resentfully that she is pregnant again, but then falls down the stairs of their home, and miscarries.

As Scarlett recovers, and Rhett attempts a reconciliation, young Bonnie, as impulsive as her grandfather, dies in a fall from her pony when she attempts a jump. Scarlett and Rhett are devastated, and exchange recriminations over her death. Melanie visits to comfort them, but then collapses in labor from a pregnancy she was warned could kill her. On her death bed, she asks Scarlett to look after Ashley for her, as Scarlett had looked after her for Ashley. Scarlett realizes that Melanie had known all along about her and Ashley, but was too good-hearted to think ill of her. With her dying breath, Melanie also tells Scarlett to be kind to Rhett, that he loves her. Outside, Ashley collapses in tears, helpless without his wife. Only then does Scarlett realize that she never could have meant anything to him, and that she had loved something that never really existed.

She runs home to find Rhett packing to leave her, saying it is too late to repair their marriage. She begs him not to leave, telling him she realizes now that she had loved him all along, and that she never really loved Ashley. Rhett tells her that as long as there was Bonnie, whom he could spoil and love unconditionally, as he wished he could with Scarlett, there was a chance that they might be happy, but now that chance was gone.

As Rhett walks out the door, she begs him, "Rhett, if you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?" He answers, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and turns away. She sits on her stairs and weeps in despair, "What is there that matters?" She then recalls the voice of her father Gerald: "Land's the only thing that matters, it's the only thing that lasts." And Ashley: "Something you love better than me, though you may not know it. Tara." And Rhett: "It's from this you get your strength, the red earth of Tara."

Hope lights Scarlett's face: "Tara! Home. I'll go home, and I'll think of some way to get him back! After all, tomorrow is another day!" And in the final scene, Scarlett stands once more, unbroken, before Tara.

Behind the scenes

Producer David O. Selznick, head of Selznick International Pictures, decided that he wanted to create a film based on the novel after his story editor Kay Brown read a pre-publication copy in May 1936 and urged him to buy the film rights. A month after the book's publication in June 1936, Selznick bought the rights for $50,000, a record amount at the time.Selznick gave her an additional $50,000 as a bonus when he dissolved Selznick International Pictures in 1942. Major financing for the film was provided by Selznick business partner John Hay Whitney, a financier who later went on the become a U.S. ambassador.

The casting of the two lead roles became a complex, two-year endeavor. Many famous or soon-to-be-famous actresses were either screen-tested, auditioned, or considered for the role of Scarlett, including Katharine Hepburn, Norma Shearer, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Susan Hayward, Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne, Merle Oberon, Ida Lupino, Joan Fontaine, Loretta Young, Miriam Hopkins, Tallulah Bankhead, Frances Dee, and Lucille Ball.

Four actresses, including Jean Arthur and Joan Bennett, were still under consideration by December 1938. But only two finalists, Paulette Goddard and Vivien Leigh, were tested in Technicolor, both on December 20. Selznick had been quietly considering Vivien Leigh, a young English actress little known in America, for the role of Scarlett since February 1938, when Selznick saw her in Fire Over England and A Yank at Oxford. Leigh's agent was the London representative of the Myron Selznick talent agency (headed by David Selznick's brother, one of the owners of Selznick International), and she had requested in February that her name be submitted for consideration as Scarlett. By summer of 1938, the Selznicks were negotiating with Alexander Korda, to whom Leigh was under contract, for her services later that year. But for publicity reasons David arranged to meet her for the first time on the night of December 10, 1938, when the burning of the Atlanta Depot was filmed. The story was invented for the press that Leigh and Laurence Olivier were just visiting the studio as guests of Myron Selznick, who was also Olivier's agent, and that Leigh was in Hollywood hoping for a part in Olivier's current movie, Wuthering Heights. After a series of screen tests, her casting was announced on January 13, 1939.

For the role of Rhett Butler, Clark Gable was an almost immediate favorite for both the public and Selznick. But as Selznick had no male stars under long-term contract, he needed to go through the process of negotiating to borrow an actor from another studio. Gary Cooper was thus Selznick's first choice, because Cooper's contract with Samuel Goldwyn involved a common distribution company, United Artists, with which Selznick had an eight-picture deal. However, Goldwyn remained noncommittal in negotiations. Warner Bros. offered a package of Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, and Olivia de Havilland for the lead roles in return for the distribution rights. But by then Selznick was determined to get Clark Gable, and eventually found a way to borrow him from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Selznick's father-in-law, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer, offered in May 1938 to fund half of the movie's budget in return for a powerful package: 50% of the profits would go to MGM, the movie's distribution would be credited to MGM's parent company, Loew's, Inc., and Loew's would receive 15 percent of the movie's gross income. Selznick accepted this offer in August, and Gable was cast. But the arrangement to release through MGM meant delaying the start of production until Selznick International completed its eight-picture contract with United Artists.

Principal photography began January 26, 1939, and ended on June 27, 1939, with post-production work (including a fifth version of the opening scene) going to November 11, 1939. Director George Cukor, with whom Selznick had a long working relationship, and who spent almost two years in preproduction on Gone With the Wind, was replaced after less than three weeks of shooting. From a private letter from journalist Susan Myrick to Margaret Mitchell in February 1939:

George [Cukor] finally told me all about it. He hated [leaving the production] very much he said but he could not do otherwise. In effect he said he is an honest craftsman and he cannot do a job unless he knows it is a good job and he feels the present job is not right. For days, he told me he has looked at the rushes and felt he was failing... the thing did not click as it should. Gradually he became convinced that the script was the trouble... David, himself, thinks HE is writing the script... And George has continually taken script from day to day, compared the [Oliver] Garrett-Selznick version with the [Sidney] Howard, groaned and tried to change some parts back to the Howard script. But he seldom could do much with the scene... So George just told David he would not work any longer if the script was not better and he wanted the Howard script back. David told George he was a director — not an author and he (David) was the producer and the judge of what is a good script... George said he was a director and a damn good one and he would not let his name go out over a lousy picture... And bull-headed David said "OK get out!"
Selznick had already been unhappy with Cukor ("a very expensive luxury") for not being more receptive to directing other Selznick assignments, even though Cukor had remained on salary since early 1937; and in a confidential memo written in September 1938, Selznick flirted with the idea of replacing him with Victor Fleming. (Memo, 179-180.) Victor Fleming, who had just directed The Wizard of Oz, was called in from MGM to complete the picture, although Cukor continued privately to coach Leigh and De Havilland's performances. Another MGM director, Sam Wood, worked for two weeks in May when Fleming temporarily left the production due to exhaustion.

Cinematographer Lee Garmes began the production, but after a month of shooting what Selznick and his associates thought was "too dark" footage, was replaced with Ernest Haller, working with Technicolor cinematographer Ray Rennahan. Most of the filming was done on "the back forty" of Selznick International with the few location scenes photographed in Los Angeles County or neighboring Ventura County. Estimated production costs were $3.9 million; only Ben-Hur (1925) and Hell's Angels (1930) had cost more.

Responses

First public preview

When David O. Selznick was asked by the press in early September how he felt about the film, he said: "At noon I think it's divine, at midnight I think it's lousy. Sometimes I think it's the greatest picture ever made. But if it's only a great picture, I'll still be satisfied.""G With the W," Time, vol. 34, December 25, 1939.

On September 9, 1939, Selznick, his wife Irene, investor Jock Whitney and film editor Hal Kern drove out to Riverside, California with all of the film reels to preview it before an audience. The film was still unfinished at this stage, missing many optical effects and most of Max Steiner's music score. They arrived at the Fox Theatre, which was playing a double feature of Hawaiian Nights and Beau Geste. Kern called for the manager and explained that they had selected his theatre for the first public screening of Gone With the Wind. He was told that after Hawaiian Nights had finished, he could make an announcement of the preview, but was forbidden to say what the film was. People were permitted to leave, but the theatre would thereafter be sealed with no re-admissions and no phone calls out. The manager was reluctant, but finally agreed. His only request was to call his wife to come to the theatre immediately. Kern stood by him as he made the call to make sure he did not reveal the name of the film to her.

When the film began, there was a buzz in the audience when Selzick's name appeared, for they had been reading about the making of the film for over two years. In an interview years later, Kern described the exact moment the audience realized what was happening:

When Margaret Mitchell's name came on the screen, you never heard such a sound in your life. They just yelled, they stood up on the seats...I had the [manually-operated sound] box. And I had that music wide open and you couldn't hear a thing. Mrs. Selznick was crying like a baby and so was David and so was I. Oh, what a thrill! And when "Gone With the Wind" came on the screen, it was thunderous!
In his seminal biography of Selznick, David Thomson wrote that the audience's response before the story had even started "was the greatest moment of his life, the greatest victory and redemption of all his failings."

After the film, there was a huge ovation. In the preview cards filled out after the screening, two-thirds of the audience had rated it excellent, an unusually high rating. Most of the audience begged that the film not be cut shorter and many suggested that instead they eliminate the newsreels, shorts and B-movie feature, which is eventually how Gone With the Wind was screened and would soon become the norm in movie theatres around the world.

1939 response

The film premiered in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 15, 1939 as the climax of three days of festivities hosted by the mayor which consisted of a parade of limousines featuring stars from the film, receptions, thousands of Confederate flags, false antebellum fronts on stores and homes, and a costume ball. The governor of Georgia declared December 15 a state holiday. President Jimmy Carter would later recall it as "the biggest event to happen in the South in my lifetime."

From December 1939 to June 1940, the film played only advance-ticket road show engagements at a limited number of theaters, before it went into general release in 1941. The film has become the highest-grossing movie of all time (adjusted for inflation).

Racial politics

Some have criticized the film for romanticizing, sanitizing or even promoting the values of the antebellum South, in particular its reliance on slavery. Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts has referred to it as "a romance set in Auschwitz." However, the majority of filmgoers in 1939 expressed no concerns about this.

The character of Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel, has been linked with the stock character of the "happy slave", an archetype that implicitly condones slavery. However, some, as in Scarlett's Women: Gone with the Wind and Its Female Fans by Helen Taylor, have argued that Mammy's character is more complex than this, that her character represents someone who cared for others, despite the racism and oppression she suffered. Other writers also point out that despite her position as slave, she is not shy about upbraiding her white mistress, Scarlett; and indeed, she is yelling at Scarlett in her first scene.

But Mammy frequently derides other slaves on the plantation as "field hands," implying that as a House Servant she is above the "less-refined" blacks. While never referring specifically to Mammy, civil rights leaders like Malcolm X were very critical of "house Negroes" who helped maintain the status quo of slavery and subjugation by being content with their place. Most apparent is the scene in the film where Mammy accompanies Scarlett to Atlanta, in order to convince Rhett Butler to help them pay the taxes on Tara. As they walk down the streets, Mammy passes by a Yankee carpetbagger who promises a group of ex-slaves "forty acres and a mule." The ex-slaves are excited, but Mammy glares at them disapprovingly.

Responding to the racial critiques of the film, Selznick replied that the black characters were "lovable, faithful, high-minded people who would leave no impression but a very nice one." While Mammy is generaly portrayed in a positive light, other black characters in the film are not so fortunate.

The character of Prissy, played by Butterfly McQueen, is a caricature of the dim-witted slave girl, propagating the stereotype that black servants were stupid and childish. In one especially famous scene, as Melanie is about to give birth, Prissy bursts into tears and admits she lied to Scarlett: "Lawzy, we got to have a doctor. I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies!" (in response, Scarlett slaps her).[link] In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the former civil rights leader recounted his experience of watching this particular scene as a small boy in Michigan: "I was the only Negro in the theater, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug."

Others have pointed out that Scarlett also slaps Ashley, Rhett, and her sister Suellen. But none of those incidents involved Scarlett punishing a slave like Prissy who could not reasonably retaliate. Others have also argued that Prissy's frightened dim-wittedness is matched by the white matron Aunt Pittypatt, who deserts Melanie and Scarlett in their time of need. But while Aunt Pittypatt is frightened and dim-witted, she knew that unlike Prissy, she could leave without consequences.

After the Civil War, Gerald O'Hara (Scarlett's father, who owns the plantation Tara), scolds his daughter about the way she is treating Mammy and Prissy. "You must be firm to the inferior, but gentle," he advises her. While Scarlett was criticized for being too harsh on the house servants, Gerald's premise that black people are "inferior" never gets questioned in the film at all. 

After Gerald O'Hara's death, Scarlett gives his old watch to Pork -- a loyal black house-servant played by Oscar Polk who worked for the O'Hara family for years.  While this was a kind gesture, Pork refuses the gift.  The implied message is that, as a mere Negro, Pork was not worthy of receiving such a valuable gift and that as an obedient house-slave, he "knew his place."


Some scenes subtly undercut the apparent romanticization of Southern slavery. During the panicked evacuation of Atlanta as Union troops approach, Scarlett runs into Big Sam, the black foreman of the O'Hara plantation. Big Sam informs her that he (and a group of black field-hands who are with him) have been impressed to dig fortifications for the Confederacy. But these men are singing "Go Down Moses", a famous black spiritual that slaves would sing to call for the abolition of slavery.


The Shantytown Raid scene was changed in the film to make it less racially divisive than the book. After Scarlett is attacked in a Shantytown outside Atlanta, her husband Frank, Ashley, and others leave to raid the Shantytown that night to avenge Scarlett's honor. In the book, Scarlett's attacker was black, and her friends are identified as members of the Ku Klux Klan. In the film, Scarlett's attacker is white, and no mention of the Klan is made. In both cases, her life is saved during the attack by a black man, Big Sam.

Racial politics spilled into the film's premiere in Atlanta, Georgia. As Georgia was a segregated state, Hattie McDaniel could not have attended the cinema without sitting in the "colored" section of the movie theater; to avoid troubling Selznick, she thus sent a letter saying she would not be able to attend. When Clark Gable heard that McDaniel did not want to attend because of the racial issue, he threatened to boycott the premiere unless McDaniel was able to attend; he later relented when McDaniel convinced him to go.[[Citing sources citation needed]]


At the costume ball during the premiere, local promoters recruited blacks to dress up as slaves and sing in a "Negro choir" on the steps of a white-columned plantation mansion built for the event. Many black community leaders refused to participate. But prominent Atlanta preacher Martin Luther King, Sr. attended, and he brought his 10-year-old son, future civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who sang that night in the choir.


However, the film also resulted in an important moment in African-American history: Hattie McDaniel won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first time a black person won an Oscar.



Sexual politics


Whether Gone With the Wind celebrates women for being strong or pigeon-holes them into a submissive role is subject to intense debate. Advocates point to Scarlett O'Hara as a headstrong woman with an independent streak, and a source of strength and inspiration for women coming out of the Great Depression.


But many have criticized what they consider to be the sexist nature of the film as well. Most disturbing to them is the scene where a drunken Rhett Butler grabs Scarlett against her will and takes her upstairs as she struggles furiously in his arms — apparently to force himself sexually upon her. However, this moment, although shocking to modern audiences, is properly set up by the filmmakers in a previous scene in which Scarlett decides to eliminate sex from their marriage.


After giving birth to a baby, the vain Scarlett becomes upset that motherhood has ruined her perfect figure. She then tells Rhett that she doesn't want to have any more children and implies that she will no longer have sex with him.  He then finds a picture of Scarlett's unrequited beloved, Ashley Wilkes and threatens a divorce. She berates him and says that her door will now be locked at night. He then kicks open the door to show that no lock can keep him out. When Rhett finally confronts Scarlett later on, the angry sexual tension between them is palpable, which leads to the marital rape.  


Even more shocking to some is the following scene, which shows a happy Scarlett waking up in bed, apparently having enjoyed the previous night's implied rough sex. However this too, is set up earlier by the filmmakers during Rhett Butler's marriage proposal to Scarlett, in which he asks her if she's ever considered marrying just for fun. "Marriage fun?," she says, "Fiddle Dee Dee!  Fun for men you mean!" The implication is that until the rape, Scarlett had never enjoyed sex before. But at the exact moment that Scarlett is ready to enjoy her marriage sexually, Rhett retreats. Ever the gentleman, Rhett comes in to apologize for his behavior and to tell her that he is leaving with their daughter on an extended trip. From this point on, the marriage is doomed.



Legacy




Audio samples: 








Gone with the Wind was given theatrical re-releases in 1947, 1954, 1961, 1967, 1971, 1989, and 1998. It made its television debut on the HBO cable network in June 1976, and its broadcast debut the following November on the NBC network, where it became at that time the highest-rated television program ever presented on a single network, watched by 47.5 percent of the households in America, and 65 percent of television viewers.


In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it #4 on its "100 Greatest Movies" list. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry and has undergone a complete digital restoration.


Rhett Butler's infamous farewell line to Scarlett O'Hara, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", was voted in a poll by the American Film Institute in 2005 as the most memorable line in cinema history [link].


In 2005, the AFI ranked Max Steiner's score for the film the second greatest of all time.



Sequel

Rumors of Hollywood producing a sequel to this film persisted for decades until 1994, when a sequel was finally produced for television, based upon Alexandra Ripley's novel, Scarlett, itself a sequel to Mitchell's original. Both the book and mini-series were met with mixed reviews. In the TV version, British actors played both key roles: Welsh-born actor Timothy Dalton played Rhett while Manchester-born Joanne Whalley played Scarlett.



Credits







Oscar record



Nominated



References





Further reading



External links









Academy Award for Best Picture: Winners (1927-1940)†





 
1927–28: Wings, Sunrise | 
1928–29: The Broadway Melody | 
1929–30: All Quiet on the Western Front | 
1930–31: Cimarron | 
1931–32: Grand Hotel | 
1932–33: Cavalcade | 
1934: It Happened One Night | 
1935: Mutiny on the Bounty | 
1936: The Great Ziegfeld | 
1937: The Life of Emile Zola | 
1938: You Can't Take It with You | 
1939: Gone with the Wind | 
1940: Rebecca

†From 1927–1933, the Academy Awards did not follow a calendar year.




























































 




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