IMDb #156 Review: Gone with the Wind (1939)

Source: Wikipedia

Amidst the spectacular disintegration of the Old South, feminazi icon Scarlett O'Hara blusters through trials and triumphs before, after, and during the most decidedly un-Civil War.

Also, men.

Scarlett chases a perpetually unavailable fellow called Ashley, weds a conga line of boring blokes she doesn't care for, and shunts the inexplicably devoted rogue Rhett Butler -- until it's too late and everything's gone to pot. (Why this dashing not-much-of-a-gentleman worships this weepy, needy, greedy bitch befuddles me.)

The American Civil War blasts the Old South into rubble. A whole generation of men dies offscreen. And as the Antebellum era sashays onto the scene, Scarlett -- hard-drinking, hard-driving, all-business lady -- decides to do whatever it takes to survive. In relative luxury, preferably. She'll marry some dull old coot with big bucks, take over his lumber empire when he keels over, screw over impoverished employees, the works.

But suppose, somehow, miraculously, the perfect (?) man netted the perfect (?!) woman. The entire universe warps into unnatural shapes and non-Euclidean geometries to unite the star-crossed lovers, Rhett and Scarlet.

Of course it goes terribly wrong. Alcoholism, motherly neglect clashes with fatherly dotage, and years of baggage (delivered first-class), put noticeable makeup lines on their faces.

So when the timeless last line smacks the audience in the face, it carries the burden of decades of failed romantic advances. And casts it down.

What to make of this roiling soup of murky morals, exploded hopes, and unrequited love?

Classic, obviously. With an orchestra this maudlin, Technicolor twilit silhouettes this prevalent, a story this sprawling, and a heroine this thick-headed and unlikable, it's inevitable. In the thirties? They must have sold off the family homestead and the rest of the whole bloody state to finance it.

Though why this film pines for the frankly awful time period also befuddles me. Oh, this civilization is lost forever, gone with the wind? No more poofy-dressed floozies nattering about their brainless quixotic beaus while the household slaves invisibly toil until their weary bodies plop into shallow unmarked graves? GOOD FRIGGING RIDDANCE.

221 minutes.