Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Gone With the Wind is the twelfth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. *Note, due to a streaming issue Best Picture #10 The Life of Emile Zola will be posted at a later date Looking over the long history of the Oscars and Hollywood in general, not many pictures hold the same venerated place in film history that Gone With the Wind enjoys. The nearly four hour civil war epic set records at the time for nominations and wins at that stood for nearly two decades and it is to this day the highest grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation.
Despite its lofty reputation, Gone With the Wind is the old Hollywood classic I have most resisted visiting. Maybe because of the runtime or a vague knowledge of its confederate South setting, but in finally watching the film for this project I now see that hesitancy as prophetic. Gone With the Wind is overlong and disturbingly problematic in both perspective and historical revisionism. A years long epic, the film revolves around the fortunes and misfortunes of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivian Leigh), a fiery southern belle in antebellum Georgia. Scarlett, the daughter of a plantation owner, is unconcerned with the potential of a coming Civil War as she pines after Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), another plantation owner who is courting his own cousin Melanie (Olivia de Havilland). Before, during and after the Civil War Scarlett uses the affection of other men to spark jealousy in Ashley and to build financial security for herself and her war-ravaged home. One man in particular, the cynical and conniving Rhett Butler (Clark Gable, star of 3 of the last 6 Best Picture winners), tumultuously entangles himself with Scarlett across the years. From even the opening title Gone With the Wind is tremendously problematic and was even identified as such by commentators of color at the time of its release. Every hero of the picture is a slave owner or soldier for the Confederate army fighting to preserve the right of white southerners to own, work and abuse Black people as property. I could imagine an argument that Scarlett and Rhett, both being morally questionable characters who manipulate and abuse those around them, subvert the glorifying perspective of the South. Scarlett spends much of the film throwing tantrums and manipulating awestruck men into marriage so she may use their money to preserve her family plantation. Rhett, meanwhile, is portrayed as believing in nothing whatsoever beyond personal profit and gain. He fights for the Confederacy for money and is physically and emotionally abusive in his later relationship with Scarlett. If the film were simply about the two of them I could see the case for it as a critique of the view of the old South as gentlemanly and noble. Unfortunately the film revolves around a great number of young men and women who are portrayed as smart, kind and noble even as they attempt to uphold the vile practice of slavery. If there were any questions as to the perspective of Gone With the Wind, those are definitively answered in the opening credits of the film, a paragraph worth reading in full: “There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow.. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind...” What I found most disturbing of all was the historical revisionism used to perpetuate the lost cause narrative of the Civil War and reconstruction period. Black characters are mostly portrayed as genial, simple and caring members of the family, facing very little abuse and happily doting over the O’Hara family. Hattie McDaniel, who became the first Black person to win an Oscar, is great as Mammy but hers is still a role designed to minimize the vulgarity of slavery. There is, of course, a great deal of technical brilliance to Gone With the Wind. In performance, costuming, set design and technicolor cinematography it is very well produced across the enormous runtime. That being said, there is no amount of formal excellence that can whitewash away the content of a film that so deliberately whitewashes American history. How can one empathize with the romantic follies of these women who don regal dresses hand sewn by their enslaved house servants? What good is gorgeous camerawork whose only purpose is to lionize traitorous men that fought and killed to preserve their right to own other human beings? Nearly every Best Picture winner up to this point had some problematic elements that could be attributed to its time but none of those could hold a candle to a film that is entirely conceived and designed as a blatant piece of propaganda for the Confederate South. Even in its time many recognized Gone With the Wind as such and I found very little of value in it from a modern perspective. 3/10
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