GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) ***1/2 The first half is an incredibly brilliant anti-war movie, the second is a moving tragedy. It encompasses all of the joy and sorrow and honor and scandal of so many lives...at under four hours it's way too short. That being true on some sidereal scale, I have my own joys and scandals to worry about and I don't know how much more of it I could have taken. Vivien Leigh finds the blueprint for the southern belle that millions have endeavored to represent ever since: the demure bone structure, the self-centeredness, the vivacity, the grit, the pettiness, the all encompassing vortex that can only be generated from within but so seems to come from someplace else. She's an incredible character study, and I don't know if her accent was perfect at the time or if southern women have perfected their imitation of it since. Clark Gable's denunciation of her is misguided, fair, ultimate, but never terminal. Of course Clark 's more than a gentleman, and no actor has ever thrown away his good lines more effectively, or smirked in the general direction of the camera with more apparent confidence. Maybe Hattie McDaniel's performance is the best of all, certainly all of them benefit from being in the same film as Olivia de Havilland, Harry Davenport plays his role to absolute perfection. There are, it's true, a lot of different kinds of perfection. I can't sit around bewailing the loss of a civilization based on slavery, but I appreciate that there are many wonderful things about the South. That some of them were greater and more pronounced in those days. Still, I'd trade all that cultured elegance and stuff for any small portion of what Elvis and Muddy Waters brought forth in a heartbeat. Some incredible shots that are lost in the near hysteria of great and moving scenes. If it's all more passionate than intellectual, if sometimes they shoot for so much that even the incredible cast can't sustain it, if they're up there making mistakes in their lives that we wish our neighbors wouldn't make, or we wouldn't make; none of that is an indictment.
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Reviews won't do it any more! I need sustained brilliance! I want to buy your novel!