34th Hall of Fame

I am half-way through At Play in the Fields of the Lord and I gotta say, it's much better when you are awake. The jungle is almost always going to boost a film up by at least half a popcorn.

I'll take a link for The People's Joker, please and thanks.

Gone With the Wind -

Having spent, well...quite a bit of time in Georgia, I somehow have never seen this movie until now. I'll just say that this is as scandalous around here as saying I've never been to the World of Coke or to a Bulldogs game. Now that I finally have, I'm glad I did because I really enjoyed it. I also appreciate finally learning why the movie is so popular and controversial.

First of all, if this movie did not invent the Hollywood epic, it might as well have. Half the joy of watching this is basking in its grandiosity, which made me understand why it is the biggest moneymaker of all time since it begs to be seen on the big screen. One moment in particular where the camera zooms out on the Tara estate while Gerald O’Hara praises the value of land made my TV seem like it stretched to IMAX proportions. I watched a game show for movie buffs many years ago where someone argued that Vivian Leigh gives the best performance of all time in this, and I can see where he is coming from. If Leigh needed to do anything as Scarlett O'Hara, she had to convince us that the war, her romances, etc. sent her on a trip to hell and back, and she nailed it. What's more interesting to discuss, though, is whether her experiences changed her. As her short-lived marriage to her cousin Melanie's brother, Charles, indicates, Scarlett was just as prone to deception and spite before the war. These tendencies help her succeed, but as we also see in other great movies with similar arcs this one may have inspired like Citizen Kane, The Godfather Part II, etc. a professional rise tends to lead to a personal fall. With that, it is as good a time as any to mention the movie's other dynamo casting move in Gable as Butler. Charming, roguish and essentially Scarlett's mirror, their cursed romance succeeds in challenging the notion that Scarlett changes, and with her foolish pursuit of Ashley, a divide forms between who she wants to be and who she really is. There is more to it than that, though, isn't there? After all, Scarlett O'Hara is not just a legendary character because she is viscous. All the while, we are reminded that in this world run by men, Scarlett believes she must be the way she is not to succeed, but to survive. As the extensive opening credits indicate, there are many players here beyond the doomed couple, some of whom through no fault of their own made me cringe - more on that later - but everyone ends up leaving a lasting impression. Standouts are Howard's annoyingly indecisive Ashley, De Havilland's saintly Melanie and of course McDaniel's voice of reason that is Mammy.

I have not watched many epics, but I have not seen one I have disliked yet, with this being one of the best American ones I've seen. While it is also one of the longest ones I have seen, since it held my interest and nothing in it seems unnecessary, that is not a drawback. That is not to say it does not have any drawbacks: much of the dialogue, especially during Scarlett and Rhett's arguments, seems too on the nose and explanatory as if the writer had little faith in the intended audience members' attention spans. Also, despite taking the movie's age and context into consideration, I still felt bad for McQueen, Brown and Polk for how they had to portray Prissy, Big Sam and Pork respectively. With that said, despite not sharing author Margaret Mitchell's lament that the Civil War happened, I would not make any core changes to the movie, and I am thankful that nobody has done so yet. After all, I doubt I would be drawn to history, literature or movies if they only offered perspectives I agree with. Again, I am glad that I finally checked this movie off my cinematic bucket list, that it exceeded my expectations and that I have another movie to put on my list of ones to see in a theater. I am also glad that I am less likely to be tarred and feathered in my home state now.

And to think I almost watched the version for senior citizens:

Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)

Ok so just gonna address the elephant in the room, the overtly racist, pro-confederacy messaging of the film made this a complete non-starter from the opening text crawl and there was no way it was ever gonna win me back, though at least its honest and open about just wanting to own slaves and big houses instead crying "states rights" like the modern confederate sympathizers do. This had no chance and honestly I was hoping to be more conflicted about that but I don't think much else of the movie really works for me either. Don't get me wrong, I love a movie about an awful woman but she's just a little too annoying here, though I'll hang most of that on me just not being into the acting of the time. I don't know what the deal is with that accent every actor had in this era but Vivian Leigh just sounds like an overly yippy lapdog for 4 whole hours. Speaking of runtime, this shit went on longer than the actual confederacy did and I intended to watch it in one go but the fact that the first half feels nearly like a complete story (that I hated every second of) only for "INTERMISSION" to follow was just too demoralizing and I watched the second half the following day. The second half has the benefit of getting further and further away from the civil war as it goes thankfully so it gets a little less in your face with its disgusting messaging and is therefor a bit easier to watch. From here its mostly just a story of this terrible woman's life falling apart and looking at just that... its ok I guess? Its paced way too fast (wild to say about a movie this long, it just has too many things happen) and almost none of the dramatic moments land the way they're supposed to. Like, almost every tragic event in the late stages of the film feel like they're shot with comedic timing in mind, its baffling but at least somewhat entertaining. I also don't really know how this was sold as a romantic story because there is just flat out no sizzle at any point and it doesn't help that the one lead is endlessly annoying and the other I find to be rather creepy, which is exceedingly common for romantic male leads of this era, at least from my limited experience. So yeah, its a no for me.

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slurps up! 🤙🤙

Gone with the Wind, 1939

Spoiled rich girl Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) is madly in love with Ashley (Leslie Howard), who ends up engaged to the saintly Melanie (Olivia de Havilland). Unable to let her infatuation go, Scarlett carries her wounded pride through the trials and tribulations of the Civil War, and falls into a volatile affair with the mercurial Rhett (Clark Gable).

Epic visuals are the gorgeous frosting on a rotten cake of a story.

There is something to be said for scope and scale and the power of staging. I think that a sequence of Scarlett walking out into a street where thousands of men, wounded and dying, lay in the dirt. Likewise, I was very taken with a few scenes where there were overt stylistic choices, like a conversation between Melanie and Scarlett in a military hospital, filmed entirely with the women’s shadows projected large on the wall behind them.

But . . . that’s about all I can say for this film. I did watch it in one go (and I guess can give a slightly backhanded compliment that the four hours didn’t feel as long as I thought they would?), and not in one single moment did I feel myself click with anyone on screen.

The story of a self-centered promiscuous racist horse-murderer wooing a . . . . self-centered promiscuous racist horse-murderer is a hard sell for me, and every subplot centering on keeping a whole race of people in captivity left virtually nothing to gel with emotionally. Characters don’t have to be likable to be compelling, but they do have to grow or change. And yet every character in this movie stays fundamentally exactly the same, with only external forces causing them brief deviations from their norm.

It’s one thing for the characters to be tone-deaf about slavery and the subjugation of the Black people around them. That’s, you know, probably historically accurate. But the movie itself is equally tone-deaf and I found that more and more grating as it tried to frame character moments from that perspective. When Rhett declares that he’ll join and fight for the Confederacy because he can’t help but side with the underdog . . . while standing mere feet from enslaved people. Yikes. And while the movie seems to want us to be appalled at Prissy (Butterfly McQueen) lying about her midwife credentials and taking her sweet time while Melanie struggles with childbirth, I was utterly delighted. Meanwhile, there is only one thing that Black characters do to merit any kind of respect: take care of white people. Hattie McDaniel has a larger than life personality and I adored McQueen’s Prissy, but like all the other characters, they do not grow. (And the movie seems to imply that once freed Mammy and others just . . . stick around because they prefer the status quo because every enslaved person in this film absolutely loves their lives!).

Ultimately, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to get out of this film. It felt like big set pieces dancing around a fundamentally dull story about two people whose egos and rich-kid self-centeredness kept them from happiness. And when one of those people says things like “I’ll sell you South, I will!” and the other says to a grown woman “Blow your nose like a good little girl”, I’m not aboard that train.

I suppose from a cinematic completionist point of view, I’m glad to have checked this off my list.

First I want to say, this isnt my type of movie. Its not a bad film. Its not something I would normally watch from the 1930s.

It should be titled "The Dramatic Life and Loves of Scarlett O'Hara", because thats what it was. It was about the family, her beloved plantation and the men she used.

I understand in the time period this film takes place, there are things that are acceptable then but not by today's standards.

I found her character as well as many other characters annoying and overly acted.

I will leave my review as this.

Adieu

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Its tougher to be vulnerable than to actually be tough.

90's Redux Seen: 18/34
My List 2/25
#12 The Crow
One Pointer: The Polar Bear King