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6 movies in 4 months then 6 movies in 6 days. Makes sense.
34th Hall of Fame
6 movies in 4 months then 6 movies in 6 days. Makes sense.
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I killed some time looking at the past Hall of Fame winners, and now I'm angry that Her (2013) beat Ronin (1998).
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I killed some time looking at the past Hall of Fame winners, and now I'm angry that Her (2013) beat Ronin (1998).
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@jiraffejustin Can you please post a quick review of Gone With the Wind and then send in your voting ballot asap...I can't have you sending in your ballot on the very last day of the deadline April 29th, as other members are waiting to see if you finish before they will watch GWTW and then they won't have any time to watch your nom if you wait to the very end.
You don't have to rewatch At Play In the Fields of the Lord I know you said you were sleepy, hell it ain't going to win anyway so it doesn't matter and your review is more than good enough. I just now linked it on the first page.
You don't have to rewatch At Play In the Fields of the Lord I know you said you were sleepy, hell it ain't going to win anyway so it doesn't matter and your review is more than good enough. I just now linked it on the first page.
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Gone with the Wind
This is a difficult one to rate. It might be easier if I broke it down into sections:
1. Visually: is an absolutely gorgeous film, with amazing costumes and Cinematography. Some of the best I've ever seen, especially considering there weren't any special effects. A+, no question.
2. Story: its a serviceable epic drama/romance, extending over many years, several of which sees the ruin and regrowth of Scarlett's estate and life. It's decent, but at almost 4 hours, my empathy for the characters begins to dwindle. It's simply too long. This story could've easily been told in 2.5 hours. "C"
3. Setting/Message: THIS is where the Movie falls off. It's one thing to forgive an old movie for outdated social sensibilities... but that's really all the movie is. It's a film about how beautiful and wonderful the Confederate South was until the Union troops arrived.
The way the Union troops are portrayed, they might as well be invading Orcs from the Lord of the Rings. Hell, it even portrays Union Troops 'freeing slaves' as if they're human traffickers, kidnapping people. In the movie they say the Union was forcing the freed slaves to fight as soldiers, something that never happened. Many free black men fought on the Union's side, but freed slaves weren't forced into military service.
I can forgive outdated sensibilities, but this drifts into straight up propaganda. "F"
4. Acting: Scarlett is a bit childish and overly dramatic for my taste. I'd know it'd be a short movie otherwise, but for the most of the film she seems absolutely determined to not be happy. Rhett is more interesting, but sadly rapey. That I'm willing to allow for being "of it's time". It still diminishes it as a love story, in my eyes.
The strongest performances come from the side characters, especially Hattie McDaniel as Mammy.
"C+"
So where does that leave us? Well, if we average everything out, it leaves us around C or C+
At an almost 4 hour runtime, I'm rounding down to "C"
This is a difficult one to rate. It might be easier if I broke it down into sections:
1. Visually: is an absolutely gorgeous film, with amazing costumes and Cinematography. Some of the best I've ever seen, especially considering there weren't any special effects. A+, no question.
2. Story: its a serviceable epic drama/romance, extending over many years, several of which sees the ruin and regrowth of Scarlett's estate and life. It's decent, but at almost 4 hours, my empathy for the characters begins to dwindle. It's simply too long. This story could've easily been told in 2.5 hours. "C"
3. Setting/Message: THIS is where the Movie falls off. It's one thing to forgive an old movie for outdated social sensibilities... but that's really all the movie is. It's a film about how beautiful and wonderful the Confederate South was until the Union troops arrived.
The way the Union troops are portrayed, they might as well be invading Orcs from the Lord of the Rings. Hell, it even portrays Union Troops 'freeing slaves' as if they're human traffickers, kidnapping people. In the movie they say the Union was forcing the freed slaves to fight as soldiers, something that never happened. Many free black men fought on the Union's side, but freed slaves weren't forced into military service.
I can forgive outdated sensibilities, but this drifts into straight up propaganda. "F"
4. Acting: Scarlett is a bit childish and overly dramatic for my taste. I'd know it'd be a short movie otherwise, but for the most of the film she seems absolutely determined to not be happy. Rhett is more interesting, but sadly rapey. That I'm willing to allow for being "of it's time". It still diminishes it as a love story, in my eyes.
The strongest performances come from the side characters, especially Hattie McDaniel as Mammy.
"C+"
So where does that leave us? Well, if we average everything out, it leaves us around C or C+
At an almost 4 hour runtime, I'm rounding down to "C"
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First to finish! So that means my votes count double, right?
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Just an FYI, I have watched Gone with the Wind, but might just need a few days to get a review written. Fiddle-dee-dee!
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I watched back in January when it was first announced, with family, taking plenty of notes. It's taken several months to find the right tone. Final proofing, and releasing soon ...
__________________
Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.
Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.
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When i watch it, it will takee multiple days.
Yeah, I watched it over a period of 3 days.
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Gone With the Wind (1939)
Director: Victor Fleming
Key cast: Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Hattie McDaniel, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland
The year 1939 is frequently lauded as the greatest in Hollywood history. The best picture Oscar nominees are uniformly classics: Dark Victory; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Love Affair; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Ninotchka; Of Mice and Men; Stagecoach; The Wizard of Oz; Wuthering Heights.
And then there was Gone with the Wind. Nominated for 13 awards, winning eight.
This lavish romance is the tale of two larger-than-life characters. Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) is a devastatingly beautiful but vain and self-centered young girl. Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) is a devastatingly handsome but rakish and self-centered older man. They are made for each other. We can see it. Rhett can see it. Scarlett can’t. This is the romantic locus around which director Victor Fleming spins a four-hour epic that insists on slavish fidelity with Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 bestselling novel.
The first images place us in the pre-Civil War South: slaves chopping cotton. The intro declares it “a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields” where “Gallantry took its last bow.” We are swept into this world of barbeques and balls. Young women fuss with their gowns and gossip about handsome suitors. The drawing rooms are filled with young men eager for the battle to commence so they can “teach the Yankees a lesson” and return home in a few weeks.
Scarlett believes herself tragically and ever-lastingly in love with the scion of a neighboring plantation, Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), pursuing him even as he’s announcing his engagement to cousin Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). Ashley heads off to war, and Scarlett and Melanie are thrown together to find their way through. Rhett weaves in and out of their narrative, letting Scarlet know of his affection, but unwilling to marry. As the war ends and Scarlett assumes the role of family leader, Rhett decides his only way to win her is to marry and provide the financial stability she craves. Their short-lived marital bliss is shattered by an unimaginable tragedy. Will they survive it?
Director Victor Fleming’s Gone with the Wind is undeniably a masterpiece, replete with iconic images and scenes. Dapper Rhett, leering at teenage Scarlett from the bottom of a staircase. Scarlett navigating the Atlanta courtyard filled with Confederate dead and wounded. Scarlett raising a defiant fist against a setting sun, declaring “I will never be hungry again!” Rhett sweeping Charlotte into his arms and disappearing with her into the dark at the top of a staircase. Rhett uttering that famous closer, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” before fading into the mist. And Scarlett’s equally famous concluding words, “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
The acting awards were undeniably earned by Vivien Leigh as best actress and Hattie McDaniel as best supporting actress for her role as Mammy, the obsessively devoted slave and nanny to Scarlett. (McDaniel was the first African American to win an acting Oscar, and one of only two African American women to win for acting in the 20th Century, Whoopi Goldberg being the other a half-century later in 1990.) I have not seen Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, but it must have been a remarkable effort to have denied Gable a best actor nod. GWTW also earned recognition for direction, screenplay, cinematography, art direction, and editing. (But its memorable score lost out to The Wizard of Oz.)
I’ll grant Gone with the Wind points for its ambitious production values and superb acting. But the story leaves me cold and frequently angry on multiple counts.
I find no redeeming value in the core protagonists, who undergo little meaningful character arc. Scarlett in particular may have taken command of her fate by the final frame, but she remains as teeth-grindingly manipulative, vain, and deluded as she was four hours previously. Rhett is no hero, joining the cause only when it is beyond hope, and, though damaged by personal loss, evokes no sympathy when his fragile ego is wounded a final time.
The year 1939 was also an era when segregation was still enforced by law in the South and practiced extensively throughout the States. Hattie McDaniel was prohibited from entering the segregated Atlanta theater where GWTW debuted. She was initially banished from the Academy Awards ceremony as well until producer David O. Selznick reportedly called in a favor. She and her escort were seated separately at the back, not allowed to join the white cast members. Her acceptance speech was dignified and restrained.
Can we excuse GWTW as a “product of its time”? No. Because of what else we know about the year 1939: It was as far removed from 1865 as we are today from World War II. How would you react to a movie set in Germany in 1945 that referred to the Axis powers only as “invaders”?
One cannot fault the actors for showing up for such a payday. The genuine fault lies with a Hollywood system whose goal of cashing in on the popularity of a mammoth bestseller led it to embrace all of the original novel’s faults and, over a tedious four-hour run time, admit virtually no concessions to moral truths.
No one should expect this yarn to be completely reworked as a tale of contrition; that would be just as dishonest. But could it not have been so relentless in its whitewashing of the past? One could excuse some lamentations about “a civilization gone with the wind” if it were seasoned with some acknowledgment of regret and guilt.
What, for example, should we make of Ashley’s observation that, though the war forced him to free his slaves, he would have done so anyway after his father died. The filmmakers were willing to overlook the original novel’s references to the Klan, but in this speech they did not see an opportunity to introduce the slightest tinge of remorse or acknowledgment of moral culpability. His father’s pride was more important than the freedom of the humans he owned. Or, after the war ends, could we not, among the tedious hours of Scarlett’s whining, have eavesdropped on her for just a few minutes addressing her beloved Mammy with genuine thanks? Could we not know even whether the former slaves are now working for a wage or just for room and board? Something. Anything.
But all this makes GWTW required viewing for cinephiles, as it provides a perfect scale upon which to weigh one’s own capacity for balancing art and message. From the lavish parties at Tara and the spine-tingling escape from the Atlanta inferno, to the offensive stereotypes and anemic apologetics. For every viewer there is an opinion, from those who place it in their top 10 as the pinnacle of Hollywood showmanship, to those who view it as the damaged product of a profit-driven Hollywood system that stared directly into the face of evil … and looked the other way.
Director: Victor Fleming
Key cast: Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Hattie McDaniel, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland
The year 1939 is frequently lauded as the greatest in Hollywood history. The best picture Oscar nominees are uniformly classics: Dark Victory; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Love Affair; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Ninotchka; Of Mice and Men; Stagecoach; The Wizard of Oz; Wuthering Heights.
And then there was Gone with the Wind. Nominated for 13 awards, winning eight.
This lavish romance is the tale of two larger-than-life characters. Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) is a devastatingly beautiful but vain and self-centered young girl. Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) is a devastatingly handsome but rakish and self-centered older man. They are made for each other. We can see it. Rhett can see it. Scarlett can’t. This is the romantic locus around which director Victor Fleming spins a four-hour epic that insists on slavish fidelity with Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 bestselling novel.
The first images place us in the pre-Civil War South: slaves chopping cotton. The intro declares it “a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields” where “Gallantry took its last bow.” We are swept into this world of barbeques and balls. Young women fuss with their gowns and gossip about handsome suitors. The drawing rooms are filled with young men eager for the battle to commence so they can “teach the Yankees a lesson” and return home in a few weeks.
Scarlett believes herself tragically and ever-lastingly in love with the scion of a neighboring plantation, Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), pursuing him even as he’s announcing his engagement to cousin Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). Ashley heads off to war, and Scarlett and Melanie are thrown together to find their way through. Rhett weaves in and out of their narrative, letting Scarlet know of his affection, but unwilling to marry. As the war ends and Scarlett assumes the role of family leader, Rhett decides his only way to win her is to marry and provide the financial stability she craves. Their short-lived marital bliss is shattered by an unimaginable tragedy. Will they survive it?
Director Victor Fleming’s Gone with the Wind is undeniably a masterpiece, replete with iconic images and scenes. Dapper Rhett, leering at teenage Scarlett from the bottom of a staircase. Scarlett navigating the Atlanta courtyard filled with Confederate dead and wounded. Scarlett raising a defiant fist against a setting sun, declaring “I will never be hungry again!” Rhett sweeping Charlotte into his arms and disappearing with her into the dark at the top of a staircase. Rhett uttering that famous closer, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” before fading into the mist. And Scarlett’s equally famous concluding words, “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
The acting awards were undeniably earned by Vivien Leigh as best actress and Hattie McDaniel as best supporting actress for her role as Mammy, the obsessively devoted slave and nanny to Scarlett. (McDaniel was the first African American to win an acting Oscar, and one of only two African American women to win for acting in the 20th Century, Whoopi Goldberg being the other a half-century later in 1990.) I have not seen Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, but it must have been a remarkable effort to have denied Gable a best actor nod. GWTW also earned recognition for direction, screenplay, cinematography, art direction, and editing. (But its memorable score lost out to The Wizard of Oz.)
I’ll grant Gone with the Wind points for its ambitious production values and superb acting. But the story leaves me cold and frequently angry on multiple counts.
I find no redeeming value in the core protagonists, who undergo little meaningful character arc. Scarlett in particular may have taken command of her fate by the final frame, but she remains as teeth-grindingly manipulative, vain, and deluded as she was four hours previously. Rhett is no hero, joining the cause only when it is beyond hope, and, though damaged by personal loss, evokes no sympathy when his fragile ego is wounded a final time.
The year 1939 was also an era when segregation was still enforced by law in the South and practiced extensively throughout the States. Hattie McDaniel was prohibited from entering the segregated Atlanta theater where GWTW debuted. She was initially banished from the Academy Awards ceremony as well until producer David O. Selznick reportedly called in a favor. She and her escort were seated separately at the back, not allowed to join the white cast members. Her acceptance speech was dignified and restrained.
Can we excuse GWTW as a “product of its time”? No. Because of what else we know about the year 1939: It was as far removed from 1865 as we are today from World War II. How would you react to a movie set in Germany in 1945 that referred to the Axis powers only as “invaders”?
One cannot fault the actors for showing up for such a payday. The genuine fault lies with a Hollywood system whose goal of cashing in on the popularity of a mammoth bestseller led it to embrace all of the original novel’s faults and, over a tedious four-hour run time, admit virtually no concessions to moral truths.
No one should expect this yarn to be completely reworked as a tale of contrition; that would be just as dishonest. But could it not have been so relentless in its whitewashing of the past? One could excuse some lamentations about “a civilization gone with the wind” if it were seasoned with some acknowledgment of regret and guilt.
What, for example, should we make of Ashley’s observation that, though the war forced him to free his slaves, he would have done so anyway after his father died. The filmmakers were willing to overlook the original novel’s references to the Klan, but in this speech they did not see an opportunity to introduce the slightest tinge of remorse or acknowledgment of moral culpability. His father’s pride was more important than the freedom of the humans he owned. Or, after the war ends, could we not, among the tedious hours of Scarlett’s whining, have eavesdropped on her for just a few minutes addressing her beloved Mammy with genuine thanks? Could we not know even whether the former slaves are now working for a wage or just for room and board? Something. Anything.
But all this makes GWTW required viewing for cinephiles, as it provides a perfect scale upon which to weigh one’s own capacity for balancing art and message. From the lavish parties at Tara and the spine-tingling escape from the Atlanta inferno, to the offensive stereotypes and anemic apologetics. For every viewer there is an opinion, from those who place it in their top 10 as the pinnacle of Hollywood showmanship, to those who view it as the damaged product of a profit-driven Hollywood system that stared directly into the face of evil … and looked the other way.
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Gone With the Wind (1939)
Dir. Victor Fleming
The glamorized lifestyles of rich slave owners.
If you don't like Gone With the Wind, don't blame Victor Fleming, he made a perfectly filmed version of Margaret Mitchell's smash hit novel...But you can blame the old south for creating a slave based economy where a very few white southerns grew filthy rich on the backs of their slaves. People criticize GWTW for romanticizing the pre Civil War era lifestyle of the elite plantation owners like we see at Tara or Twelve Oaks, but this is their story, a story of people who were swept away with the tides of the civil war. You might hate these people and what they stood for but this is the way they lived and viewed their world from high on their pedestals.
This was only my second viewing of Gone With the Wind, I'd seen it once some twenty years ago. I'm a huge fan of Viven Leigh and this is considered her crowning achievement. She's radiant here as a southern belle who raises her eyebrow and men come a runnin'. But there's so much story in the novel that even at four hours the movie has to abbreviate many of the scenes, leaving a feeling of a mere outline of events that leaves me wishing there was more.
Also this time around I didn't feel Scarlett had much of a character arc. She neither grew as a person after the Civil War when she had to work with her hands in the soil of Tara just to survive. Nor did her selfish ways result in her loosing everything and being left utterly alone. Instead after Rhett leaves she still has vast wealth, a huge house and is ready to manipulate more people as 'tomorrow is another day'.
I didn't read the novel but I bet Scarlett has more depth to her character than in the film. But I'm not going to hate on the movie just because Scarlett and these rich slave owners aren't model citizens. Hell people love The Godfather...I guess the mafia with their killing and selling narcotics and forcing women into prostitution is all very palatable. It's odd to me how people can be offended by one unpalatable subject and lambast the other.
Gone With the Wind is the greatest achievement during the Golden Age of cinema.
This was only my second viewing of Gone With the Wind, I'd seen it once some twenty years ago. I'm a huge fan of Viven Leigh and this is considered her crowning achievement. She's radiant here as a southern belle who raises her eyebrow and men come a runnin'. But there's so much story in the novel that even at four hours the movie has to abbreviate many of the scenes, leaving a feeling of a mere outline of events that leaves me wishing there was more.
Also this time around I didn't feel Scarlett had much of a character arc. She neither grew as a person after the Civil War when she had to work with her hands in the soil of Tara just to survive. Nor did her selfish ways result in her loosing everything and being left utterly alone. Instead after Rhett leaves she still has vast wealth, a huge house and is ready to manipulate more people as 'tomorrow is another day'.
I didn't read the novel but I bet Scarlett has more depth to her character than in the film. But I'm not going to hate on the movie just because Scarlett and these rich slave owners aren't model citizens. Hell people love The Godfather...I guess the mafia with their killing and selling narcotics and forcing women into prostitution is all very palatable. It's odd to me how people can be offended by one unpalatable subject and lambast the other.
Gone With the Wind is the greatest achievement during the Golden Age of cinema.
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@jiraffejustin Can you please post a quick review of Gone With the Wind and then send in your voting ballot asap...I can't have you sending in your ballot on the very last day of the deadline April 29th, as other members are waiting to see if you finish before they will watch GWTW and then they won't have any time to watch your nom if you wait to the very end.
You don't have to rewatch At Play In the Fields of the Lord I know you said you were sleepy, hell it ain't going to win anyway so it doesn't matter and your review is more than good enough. I just now linked it on the first page.
You don't have to rewatch At Play In the Fields of the Lord I know you said you were sleepy, hell it ain't going to win anyway so it doesn't matter and your review is more than good enough. I just now linked it on the first page.
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Im at a cabin in the woods right now, I’ll be back in civilization on Monday. I can write my stuff on Monday. I’m going to give your film a proper watch. I’d rather you disqualify me than me not watch the film properly.
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Gone with the Wind
A film hall of fame without Gone with the Wind would be like a baseball hall of fame without Babe Ruth. It's a big, beautiful movie that represents the high water mark of American film achievement. There have been better American films after this, but nothing of this scope. It's probably cool not to like this now, both because it's a hip thing to do and also because you can take the moral high ground. I am not much of an activist, I just like good movies. I like Das Boot too. This is the best soap opera of all time and Scarlett has pretty dresses and the set design is fantastic. Just a fantastic achievement.
A film hall of fame without Gone with the Wind would be like a baseball hall of fame without Babe Ruth. It's a big, beautiful movie that represents the high water mark of American film achievement. There have been better American films after this, but nothing of this scope. It's probably cool not to like this now, both because it's a hip thing to do and also because you can take the moral high ground. I am not much of an activist, I just like good movies. I like Das Boot too. This is the best soap opera of all time and Scarlett has pretty dresses and the set design is fantastic. Just a fantastic achievement.
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Gone With the Wind
I didn't care for the racial undertones, but loved the end scene. There was a decent pace to the movie for how long it is. The movie feels dated in spots though but that's to be expected. But the two leads did really well and there was good chemistry. I've always enjoyed Gable and Leigh. Love the end dialogue frankly my dear I don't give a damn. But the movie is too long. I'll have to watch it again as there was parts I was in and out of mentally. But it's quite a notable film in cinematic history.
I didn't care for the racial undertones, but loved the end scene. There was a decent pace to the movie for how long it is. The movie feels dated in spots though but that's to be expected. But the two leads did really well and there was good chemistry. I've always enjoyed Gable and Leigh. Love the end dialogue frankly my dear I don't give a damn. But the movie is too long. I'll have to watch it again as there was parts I was in and out of mentally. But it's quite a notable film in cinematic history.
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