Gone with the Wind

1939 most magnificent picture ever!

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A lot of crap happens in Georgia during the Civil War and right after the Civil War involving an awful woman and a guy with a mustache.

I fell asleep while watching this about 25 years ago, and since it's regarded by some people as one of the greatest movies of all time, I figured I'd better watch it before putting together my final list of favorite 1939 movies.

Don't get me wrong--I didn't hate it. However, it's way longer than it needs to be. The second half seems especially bloated, and the first half is much more interesting than the second half. In fact, this thing drags from the intermission to the part where the little girl hilariously falls off the pony and kills herself. Yes, that's a spoiler, but this movie came out eighty years ago, and anybody who doesn't fall asleep by the point already knows how it ends for annoying Bonnie.

Cammie King Conlon was also in Bambi, by the way. This is the second really obnoxious child I've seen recently who also did voice work in Bambi. I'm not sure who she voiced. Maybe the hunter who kills Bambi's mom?

I really did chuckle during that scene. It was so obvious that she was going to fall off the horse that I could just concentrate on how somebody died in a pony accident. That's what she gets for killing Bambi's mom three years later, right?

The music hits you hard right from beginning of the credits and really right before that during the overture, but it's not necessarily in a bad way because that theme is so good. But then, when that somber version of "I Wish I Was in Dixie Land" came on, something told me that I should look away, look away, look away from this piece of historical fiction, one nostalgic for a time when we could own human beings. After that, the music is almost constant, just as one might expect.

Is it just me or do a lot of transitions in this seem like they could be the very end of a movie? I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I guess you could say that Victor Fleming knew how to end a movie several times.

How about that guy, by the way? Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz in one year? Unfortunately, Fleming, who had access to all of these little people from the other film ("Singer's Midgets") didn't think to use them in this film. Think of how Scarlett's walk through all the wounded people in the street would have looked if all those extras were little people!

Is it just me or does this movie seem superlong while also yadda-yadda-yaddaing over a lot of key moments?

Is it just me, or am I overusing the phrase "Is it just me. . ."?

Two random things:

1) Rhett Butler's face after every single line he utters in the first half of this movie could be used as an "irony emoticon" so that people will know your texts or online comments are ironic.

2) There's a character named Pittypat Hamilton in this, and I really wish my name were Pittypat Hamilton. I wish I was in Dixie so that my name could be Pittypat.

There are a lot of really beautiful things in this movie, individual shots that manage to stick out in this bloated epic romance.

A pair of black boys ringing a bell against one of the film's many sunsets. The rolling plowed fields. Lots and lots of skies, seemingly painted. The camera moving through napping women while black girls an them with peacock feathers (though I definitely do not approve of slavery, I think I am in favor of parties with required nap times). The swirl of men running off to enlist while goofy-faced Charles and Scarlett rush to court each other. The splashes of colors at a dance and a quick shot of Scarlett's calves. A door closing and darkness moving like a curtain over Scarlett as she stands at the bottom of the stairs. A pan over patients at a makeshift hospital with a stained glass Jesus looking on. The wild fleeing of Savanna, Rhett noting, "Panic's a pretty sight, isn't it?" The aforementioned scene where Scarlett maneuvers through all these wounded men before the shot settles on a flapping Confederate flag, the sequence that Spike Lee used in Blackkklansman. The shots of the characters fleeing with the fire in the background. A rainbow over a ravaged battlefield. Sherman's march--like a silent shot in monochromatic orange. A destroyed South, plantations in rubble. A shot of Rhett drunkenly carrying Scarlett up the staircase because his mustache is in the mood for love even if she isn't. All that fog at the end.

I'm not sure why Song of the South is considered offensive while this movie isn't, but what do I know.

I wonder if the scene where Scarlett shoots a motherfucker right in the face was the bloodiest moment in movie history up to that point. I mean, was there even blood shown in color before this movie?