Gone with the Wind
December 5, 2004
“Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war. This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream.” And thus we are introduced to Miss Katie Scarlett O’Hara, middle daughter of the Tara plantation, Georgia, circa 1863, as she wallows in the bask of two love struck brothers on the eve of the greatest war of all time. Scarlett is, like much of David O. Selznick’s gloriously melodramatic production of “Gone with the Wind”, torn between having a grand old time at an afternoon party, and thoughts of the oncoming storm, the death and destruction it will bring to the South, and if, pray tell, it will take her beloved, married, Ashley Wilkes along with it. How great, and somewhat troubling, that the most famous film ever made about the Civil War, and indeed, the most famous film of all time, boils down to a spoiled girl and her dreams of an unobtainable crush, and the poor men who suffer the wrath of jealousy and spite marriage as an offshoot of her inability to land said man. You see, Scarlett, played to bratty perfection by a relative unknown in 1939, Vivien Leigh, has one thing on her mind, and not even a war, death, and poverty can get her off that track, the track of loving Ashley Wilkes, of the wealthy Twelve Oaks plantation, and even though he struggles to convince her that he loves his wife, Scarlett pines for the dashing redhead soldier just the same, and for nearly four screen hours, through unspeakable dread, poverty, and rebirth in the potential love of the complicated visitor from Charleston, Rhett Butler, she never quite gets the picture. And that is the point of the entire sprawling narrative, bouncing back and forth from Atlanta, to Tara, to New Orleans, to London, to Tara, to Atlanta, and finally, ultimately, to Tara; it’s that the South just didn’t know what it was up against, just like they didn’t fully grasp the severity of slavery, and like Scarlett, and like the grand spectacle of “Gone with the Wind” versus the social importance of its overwhelming back story, the Civil War, the inability to change pigheaded actions leads to devastation, and eventually, when the bell finally tolls, to rebirth and a much needed comeuppance. In the end, Scarlett O’Hara is redeemed, but only after she has lost everything she’s ever loved, and the film lands her, and us, at a happy spot, at home, the red earth of Tara, where it all began with that innocent “Fiddle-dee-dee.”
“Gone with the Wind” is justly celebrated for its lavish production values, expressionistic use of set design and color scheme, and its unending torturous treatment of the notion of a Southern Belle getting her just deserts, exemplified in Scarlett, and the three major changes she endures that mirror the progress of the South’s collapse. When we first meet Scarlett on that sunny day at Tara, she is but a lovesick pup, dashing around in her white petticoat, rich as the sky is blue, and fresh as the sun is yellow. We could say this Scarlett is the slave-owning, ignorant, impossibly proud Southern fathers, and throughout the film this innocent Scarlett struggles for survival against the Scarlett of the second act, the wartime girl who has to treat Atlanta’s wounded as a nurse, help birth Melanie Hamilton’s (Ashley’s beloved wife) baby, alone and scared, and help rebuild her tattered, much loved home land. This second Scarlett can be seen as the losing Confederate Will, after Sherman scorches his way through Atlanta and straight on to the Atlantic, but it helps form her final growth, like the South would face after the Carpetbaggers move in for the taking, into the woman who would save her land, very begrudgingly passing up happiness, watching her family disintegrate, one by one, before her eyes, to finally realizing that, forgoing any personal hurt feelings, tomorrow is another day. If Scarlett can weather the storm, than maybe, just maybe, the wind will pass through the South, and with time, the greatest modern day melodramatic film epic we know will capture her struggles with love and death as if it was the losing end of the war itself. “Do not squander time,” reads the famous clock outside the gates of Twelve Oaks, “that is the stuff life is made of.” After the tears, after Rhett walks into the fog, hardly giving a damn, after the whole mess has played out, we feel secure in the knowledge that our heroine, a girl of impossible selfishness and stubbornness, has finally understood the clock’s concept, and the revelation is as satisfying as a good mint julep.
Getting us to this final redemption isn’t a smooth road, but director Victor Fleming, and more importantly, the mad genius of producer David O. Selznick, sustain a level of grand scale artistry for four hours never surpassed in the studio system era. If “Citizen Kane” was to represent the heights of what black and white composition could produce as part storyteller, and part aesthetic maturity, than Selznick’s vision of the Old South in “Gone with the Wind” is the ultimate spectacle of modern moviemaking in Technicolor. The reds used when Rhett kisses Scarlett after fleeing Atlanta burn with an intense passion, mirroring the scene, while the blacks and yellows used during the famous hospital sequence and Melanie’s birth scene, overpowered by background window shutters, are harsh in the face of impending tragedy. The color scheme is impressive, but the sheer scope of the production, especially the middle act, complete with hundreds of fake bodies for the masterful carnage pullout- revealing a tattered Confederate flag- is enormous, and almost cost Selznick his production company, but the gamble ultimately paid off, and the enduring images we have from this huge masterpiece, a film that won a then record 10 Oscars in 1939, arguably the greatest year in Hollywood history, are the stuff of legend.
To create such a legendary mammoth in film history wasn’t easy, and given the enormity of the production, and the popularity of Margaret Mitchell’s thousand-plus word 1936 novel, the speculation and rumors ran rampant. The top questions: Who would play Scarlett? Would they actually land Gable, like everybody wanted? Would Selznick reign supreme, away from MGM, yet still partially shackled financially to his father-in-law Louis B. Mayer? And most importantly, would the film stay true to the book, without cutting too much for necessary dramatic effect, and manageable screen time? The answers to all of the questions can be found right there on the screen, and in countless history books, for, despite the speculation that Selznick was in over his head, the end product, which took roughly 125 days to shoot, and six months of painstaking 23-hour editing shifts to cut, is about as skilled as any big-money adaptation ever made. Now, I submit, from a list of literally hundreds of talented people who had a hand in creating this classic, a simple list of ten contributing factors to why “Gone with the Wind” ended up so memorably memorable.
10. William Cameron Menzies, Production Designer. Menzies won a special Oscar for his designs behind ‘Wind’, and the films painted backgrounds and lavish set constructions wouldn’t have been so opulent and gorgeous if it weren’t for Menzies’ gifted sketches and visionary imagination. The burning of Atlanta sequence, which utilized old sets from films long past, is a particular triumph in production planning and execution. No film has ever looked quite like “Gone with the Wind”, and that’s about the best compliment a production designer can ever receive.
9. Ernest Haller and Ray Rennehan, Color Cinematographers. Capturing the red skies, green dresses, and burning Southern cities, these two Oscar-winners, the latter a reigning expert on the Technicolor process, painstakingly set up the tricky camera pans, and intense close-ups (dig Scarlett’s face during the brutal leg amputation scene) for hours on end, and perfectly complimented the production design with appropriately smooth camerawork. It is said that at one point during the shoot, every single Technicolor camera in Hollywood was employed. Watch the prayer scene just after the war breaks out and tell me exactly how Scarlett and Melanie’s shadows are projected so big on the back wall. It’s simply cinematic mastery.
8. Hattie McDaniel- Mammy. “Gone with the Wind” sometimes catches heat for its use of racial stereotypes, even though Selznick tried terribly to eliminate any verbal hints at racism, and indeed, there are a few scenes that induce winches for their naïve handling of the post war Southern color line, but perhaps the films saving grace is McDaniel, as Scarlett’s beloved caregiver Mammy (try to ignore the Aunt Jemima connotations of the name), who loves Scarlett and her sisters dearly, and whose emotional performance was a breakthrough for a black community largely underused in old Hollywood. Watch the staircase scene where Mammy weeps through a speech to Melanie detailing Rhett’s deterioration after the death of his daughter, and you’ll know why she won the richly deserved Supporting Actress award that year, the first Oscar to a black actor, a landmark in its own right.
7. Walter Plunkett, Costume Designer. You may not think much of costume design, often it’s one of those talents that it a given to an audience, but Plunkett deserves special notice for his immense wardrobe designs used in the film. The Atlanta bazaar alone must be comprised of at least 50 flowing petticoat gowns, and Scarlett’s velvet green dress, made of the remaining drapes of a burned out Tara, is a masterpiece in form and imagination.
6. Olivia de Havilland- Melanie Hamilton. As I was re-watching the film for the umpteenth time, I noticed that every character has his or her agendas, except de Havilland’s saintly Melanie, who is arguably the films only true good character, and for that matter, her relationship with Leslie Howard’s Ashley Wilkes is really the only marriage based purely on love. Need I say more than, throughout the entire picture, the only scene in the film that actually warrants a tissue is Melanie’s painful deathbed forgiveness to Scarlett, the woman constantly trying to steal her husband away from her. If, by the time Melanie turns in, you haven’t been moved by de Havilland’s compassionate performance, you weren’t paying close enough attention.
5. Sidney Howard, Screenwriter. This slot could also go to Margaret Mitchell, the former Atlanta journalist, and party girl, who conceived of the story from old family war tales, but adapting the dense novel to a workable screenplay was a formidable task, and Howard, an accomplished playwright, did a sparkling job working from his farm in Massachusetts. Not that Selznick much noticed, constantly toying with the script, rewriting Howard’s original draft numerous times, even commissioning F. Scott Fitzgerald for a few days, but eventually, at the behest of Ben Hecht, the Howard version ultimately served as the blueprint for the shoot, with revisions by Selznick, and director Victor Fleming. Unfortunately, Howard was killed in an accident before he could see the finished product, or accept his Oscar, but his work during the initial stages of the film is just one of the shining gems in an accomplished cannon of writing.
4. Clark Gable- Rhett Butler. Frankly, my dear, in 1939, there was no other choice to play the dashing millionaire who falls for Scarlett, and jolts her in the end, but being MGM property, he was difficult to secure, and only after some intense maneuvering, and an okay that he needn’t attempt a Southern accent, Selznick got his Rhett, and the rest is history. Interesting note: Gable is one of the few major contributors who didn’t win an Oscar, though he probably should have. In a year that saw nominations for James Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, Laurence Olivier in “Wuthering Heights”, and the weakest link, Mickey Rooney for “Babes in Arms”, the Oscar went to British actor Robert Donat for his kind performance in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. Even so, 65 years later, Gable’s towering performance is still the standard bearer for what a Hollywood superstar can accomplish with the whole film world at his feet. Gable was king, and Rhett is his crowing achievement.
3. Vivien Leigh- Scarlett O’Hara. The search for Scarlett was one of the most arduously chronicled auditions in film history, and the British trained Leigh was initially low on the list. But after Selznick’s brother signed Leigh- Laurence Olivier’s lover at the time- it wasn’t long before she overtook Paulette Goddard in the race, and after watching the burning of Atlanta on a huge MGM back lot, at the personal invite of Selznick, Leigh was told she won the role of a lifetime. No screen heroine has ever been so glamorously misguided, and eventually redeemed like Scarlett O’Hara, and Leigh’s fiery reading, luxurious brown hair, and gorgeous sparkling eyes now seem like they were born purely for that role, and maybe they were. Leigh later won another Oscar as Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, but to millions, she’ll always be Scarlett, both a blessing, and in a way, to a professional, a curse.
2. Victor Fleming, Director. What a year 1939 was for the talented Victor Fleming. Having nearly finished guiding Judy Garland and company down the Yellow Brick Road in “The Wizard of Oz”, a film perhaps beloved even more so than ‘Wind’, he was called in by Selznick to direct the bulk of his epic, after a falling out forced original director George Cukor to quit. Fleming’s friendship with Gable helped ease tensions (Cukor was quite loved by the female cast), and, despite a brief respite due to exhaustion- in which Sam Wood took the reigns- Fleming sailed through the shoot with little trouble, save for the occasional Selznick yellow suggestion note. Fleming won Best Director, capping off a dream year.
1. David O. Selznick, Producer. When you think of “Gone with the Wind” from a film criticism standpoint, which many, many scholars and professors certainly have tried, it’s hard to judge it by the Auteur Theory, which states that the director is supreme overlord of a films artistic merit. In that case, Fleming takes a back seat to Selznick, whose ambitious vision of creating the biggest independently funded film of all time almost crashed around him when funds quickly began to dry up. With a little help from daddy-in-law L.B. Mayer, and his wealthy friend Jock Whitney, who secured a loan to wrap ‘Wind’, “Intermezzo” with Ingrid Bergman, and the upcoming “Rebecca”, another Best Picture winner, Selznick’s Folly quite gloriously turned into Selznick’s Golly, eventually becoming the most profitable picture to date, given inflation rates through time. The producer extraordinaire would never top himself, and as the years went by, his ambitions would result in over-produced spectacles like “Since You Went Away”, and the steamy “Duel in the Sun”, films that hardly hold up today as well as “Gone with the Wind” does, and it’s kind of funny to note that originally, when presented with the rights before the book was even published, he wanted nothing to do with it. Luckily Katharine Brown, a New York publishing agent, persuaded the mogul to change his mind, because who knows what would have happened in the hands of any other producer. Let’s leave that to speculation, because as it is, Selznick’s finished product, a soap wrapped in the symbolism of a dying way of life, is as good as it gets.
by Adam Suraf