Gone With the Wind (1939)

 

            “Gone With the Wind” is possibly the most famous American movie.  It was based on the biggest bestseller of its time.  For an entire generation, it created the image of the South in the  Civil War and Reconstruction.  The production was problematic.  David O. Selznick paid $50,000 for the rights to the book.  (Years later, Margaret Mitchell was given a $50,000 bonus.)  It took two years to begin shooting because Selznick wanted Clark Gable (after Gary Cooper turned down the Rhett Butler role because he was sure the film would be a flop).  1,400 women were interviewed for Scarlett.  31 were screen-tested.  It came down to Paulette Goddard and Vivien Leigh, who was little known in America.  Goddard’s scandalous affair with Charlie Chaplin nixed her.  The screenplay was a problem as well.  The book is over 1,000 pages.  Sidney Howard wrote the original script but it came in at a 6 hour movie.  Several screenwriters were brought in for revisions, but Howard still retained credit and won a posthumous Oscar.  (He had been killed in a farm tractor accident.)  Even with the rewrites, it still became the longest movie to win Best Picture.  The movie had 50 speaking roles and over 2,000 extras.  The scene with the Confederate wounded had 800 extras and 800 dummies.  George Cukor started as director, but was fired early for a disputed reason.  Most likely was because he did not fit the material.  Victor Fleming, fresh off “Wizard of Oz”, directed the film to 12 Oscar nominations.  It won for Best Picture (the first color film to win), Director, Actress, Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel), Art Direction, Adapted Screenplay, and Cinematography.  It was a huge hit and is the highest grossing American film if you adjust for inflation. 

            The movie begins with the first of Scarlett’s four “fiddle dee dees”.  It is the eve of the Civil War and all the young men are enthusiastic about the chance to prove their manhood in combat.  Better hurry and enlist because it’s going to be a short war.  What with the fact that one Southerner could whip twenty Northerners.  Rhett Butler (Gable) poops on the party by pointing out the North’s advantages in manufacturing and naval forces.  But this movie is not going to be about the war.  It is more of a biopic of a fictional character, Scarlett O’Hara.  Specifically, it deals with her unrequited love for Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard).  Unfortunately, the saintly Ashley is in love with the equally saintly Melanie (Olivia de Havilland).  To spite him, Scarlett marries Hamilton before he goes off to see the elephant.  He has “dead meat” tattooed on his forehead.  Butler becomes a glamorous blockade runner and pursuer of Scarlett.  He can have any woman, but he prefers this bitch who treats him like dirt.  He’s going to eventually get her, but not until Reconstruction. 

            The Civil War section includes the famous burning of Atlanta, one of the most famous scenes in movie history.  This is followed by Sherman’s March which gives the plucky Scarlett a chance to shoot a bummer in the face!  The war ends with Tara, Scarlett’s plantation, relatively untouched.  Here come the carpetbaggers.  Camera zooms in on a carpet bag.  The slaves are not comfortable with freedom, until they get promised “forty acres and a mule”.  Scarlett’s life is no longer one of attending dress balls.  Speaking of dress, she is forced to make a dress out of a curtain (a development mocked by Carol Burnett in a famous skit).  She is also forced to marry her sister’s beau to get money to save Tara.  Another dead meat.  At this point Scarlett is a widow twice over and still is pining for Ashley.  She settles for Rhett.  Theirs is a dysfunctional marriage which includes a marital rape scene that caused no controversy in 1939, but is squirm-worthy today.  The opposite would apply to Rhett’s “frankly dear, I don’t give a damn”.  (Chosen by AFI as the greatest quote in movie history.) 

            I originally saw GWTW in a theater (but not in 1939!) and was not impressed.  It took me decades to rewatch it because I finally convinced myself it is a war movie.  I’m still not impressed.  It is certainly a gorgeous movie with wonderful cinematography.  The acting is a strength and Gable and Leigh create indelible characters.  Scarlett O’Hara is one of the great characters in cinema.  She may be despicable, but she is more fascinating than the perfect Melanie.  The dialogue has been criticized, but I did not find it overly sappy.  It does have some great quotes. 

            Although the movie is a war movie because of the Civil War, there is little of the war in it.  It does start strong by portraying the naïve enthusiasm for the war, but why it was naïve is not depicted. We learn little of what Scarlett and Brett are doing in the war.  There is no exciting blockade running scene.  In fact, Rhett disappears for long stretches.  The movie spends more time and effort on Reconstruction.  It presents the Southern view of that period.  Carpetbaggers are evil.  Freedmen were treated worse than when they were slaves.  The upper class were downtrodden.  Boo hoo!

            I was surprised to find that the movie was not as offensive as it’s reputation.  It is not in a league with “The Birth of a Nation”.  All of the slaves are house slaves, so their depiction as loyal to their masters is not far from historical accuracy.  They are all happy.  Hattie McDaniel’s Mammy is not stomach-churning.  Most of the house slaves were Uncle Tom’s and McDaniel did not deserve condemnation.  She famously responded with:  “I’d rather make $700/week playing a maid than $7 being one.”  The movie does not use the n-word, but we do get “darkie” and “negro”.  The film does warrant criticism for not having any field slaves.  The movie does deserve the criticism for perpetuating the Lost Cause and the unfairness of Reconstruction.  It is a classic example of historical negationism which is the falsification and distortion of history.  But it did not create false history, instead it passed it on to viewers.

            GWTW is a must-see, but not a must-resee.  It is not a great war movie.  There is little of war in it and the home front scenes do not accurately reflect the South in the war and Reconstruction.  It does accurately reflect what the South thought the Civil War and Reconstruction was like.  The movie was highly entertaining for that time and thus attracted huge audiences and did more than any history book to perpetuate the Lost Cause.  I do not recommend it be shown in American History classes, but to ban it from TV is unwarranted.  It’s not a statue of Robert E. Lee.  And Scarlett O’Hara is not Varina Davis. 

GRADE  =  B-         

FORGOTTEN GEM? A Town Like Alice (1956)

 

                “A Town Like Alice” is a British war film directed by Jack Lee (“The Wooden Horse”).  It was entitled “Rape of Malay” in American theaters.   It was based on the novel by Nevil Shute. It covers the first half of the book.  Later, an Australian mini-series was made to cover the whole novel. The movie was a hit in Great Britain where it finished #3 at the box office for 1956.  It was going to be shown at Cannes, but was withdrawn for fear of offending the Japanese. 

                “The characters in this film are fictitious.  The story itself however is based on fact.”  In London, a Miss Jean Paget (Virginia McKenna) is informed that she has just come into some wealth.  She decides to go back to Malaya to dig a well for some villagers.  A flashback will explain why.  In 1942, she was secretary when the Japanese invaders arrived.  She and a group of women (the men are taken off separately) are marched from village to village.  The group is fairly heterogeneous and includes the usual bitchy rich lady and a slut.  There’s a lot of walking in this movie.  Cue the depressing marching music. The ladies are slow-moving, as is the movie during this stretch.  They meet an Australian bloke named Joe Harmon (Peter Finch) who is a prisoner who has to drive a truck for the Japanese.  Apparently, the Japanese can’t drive trucks.  He slips the women food and develops a relationship with Jean.  He tells her about his idyllic ranch near a town called Alice.  The women (not all of them, of course) end up in the village that Jean returns to to dig the well.

                “A Town Like Alice” is not a must-see, but it is entertaining.  It is the uncommon war movie that appeals to females more than males.  And it especially appeals to people who want their tears jerked.  The movie mines tears with some emotional deaths.  It is fairly bleak in spots, but for the most part, it pulls its punches as a 1956 movie would.  There is little dysfunction in the group.  The women never face any tough decisions.  They don’t look like what they have been through.  For women who have marched for four months straight, their hair looks remarkably good.  You may pull your hair a bit as the movie is tedious a times and somewhat repetitive.  It is also implausible and although claiming to be based on actual events, you can be sure the romance between Jean and Joe is cinematic fantasy.  Fortunately, the two leads have a lot of chemistry and the acting across the board is fine.  You will care about the characters and miss some of them.  It’s certainly not a rom-com, but the romance is pretty predictable.  Like an audience would have wanted in the 1950s.  And today.  As far as Cannes is concerned, the movie is surprisingly lenient with the Japanese.  It does not offend them nearly as much as it should have.

                “A Town Like Alice” is a decent movie and gets some good will for covering a story that was largely forgotten.  I’m not talking about the romance between Jean Paget and Joe Harmon.  I’m referring to the plight of women taken by the Japanese in the Pacific in World War II.  Just be aware (see below) that Shute changed the story for entertainment purposes.  It makes for a good date movie.  Is it a forgotten gem?  It is certainly forgotten.  I would theorize that the British and American titles did not help.  As far as it being a gem, it is nothing special.

 

GRADE  =  B-

 

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  Shute based his book on Dutch women who were captured in Sumatra.  One of them was Carry Geysel.  She and other women were marched from prison camp to prison camp for two and a half years.  He estimates they covered about 1,200 miles.  Later, it was determined that Shute was misinformed and the women actually were shuttled around by truck.  That would have certainly made for a less compelling book and movie.  Only 30 of the original 80 women in Geysel’s group survived.  The Harmon character was based on Hubert Hames “Ringer” Edwards.  Edwards was an Australian who was captured during the Malay Campaign.  He was put to work on the Burma Railway.  He was once crucified by his captors for 63 hours, which is probably how he ended up in the book.  Shute just had to include that scene!  I found no evidence that Geysel and Edwards ever met.                    

 

PICTURE, QUOTE, MOVIE #97

 

 

 

1.  What movie is the picture from?

 

2.  What movie is this quote from?

Sir, I've inspected this boat, and I think you ought to know that I can't swim.

 3.  What movie is this?

In the late 1960s, a British star was coming off several box office flops and his step-son urged him to dumb it down and make an action picture.  He took the idea to producer Elliot Kastner who sought out Alistair MacLean (“The Guns of Navarone”).  MacLean wrote the book and screenplay (his first) in six weeks and took the title from a line from Shakespeare.  An American star who was hoping to branch out from cowboy movies was recruited and it was off to snowy Austria and Bavaria.  Just as importantly, famed stuntman Yakima Canutt brought a cadre of great stuntmen to the production.