#6 GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

"In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you."

--- Rhett Butler

   Scarlett O'Hara is the biggest bitch in cinema history.  And it is hard not to love her.  Maybe it is her enduring spirit, her refusal to let anything or anyone stand in her way, or maybe it is the power she wields despite being a woman in wartime.  Maybe it is the way she attracts men with one glance, yet refuses to fall in love with anyone save the one she cannot have.  Maybe it is her loyalty to her family and family home that makes her such a relatable character.  Whatever it is, Vivien Leigh plays her with such conviction that it is difficult to think of the two women as separate people, one real and one imagined by author Margaret Mead.

   Gone With the Wind is not a typical love story, in fact, it is about one woman's pathetic attempts to get the man she thinks she loves to leave his wife and take her away from the battle-wounded South.  In her mind, everything she does is for her unrequited love, Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard).  She takes care of his wife Melanie (Olivia de Havilland) and their baby while he is away fighting in the Civil War.  She marries three men not for love but in an effort to make him jealous (and to provide financial security for herself).  Yet there is something likable about the fact that she will not let something like sudden poverty get her down.  She knows she has to find someone to take care of herself and her family.  It is not until she allows Rhett Butler into her life that she learns what love is, though it is too late.  

   Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) is the most lovable character in Gone With the Wind.  He is bold, brash, sarcastic, charming, self-deprecating, and relentless in his pursuit of vixen Scarlett O’Hara.  When he finally does catch Scarlett, he does not receive the amount of love he puts out.  Though he can excuse her coldness to a point, he can only take so much heartache before he decides to end the torture.  His scenes in the latter half of the film are the most endearing and the saddest to watch but well worth making it through the almost four hour long movie.  Sometimes Gone With the Wind is referred to as “the greatest love story ever told”, but it is not about love at its core: it is about one woman’s journey through life avoiding love until she is all alone, regretting that she wasted all her time without love.

FUN FACT: Southern belle Scarlett is actually played by the then relatively-unknown British actress Vivien Leigh!  Hundreds of actresses were considered for the part but Leigh was not considered and cast until primary filming had already begun on the film.

FAVORITE QUOTE: “As God is my witness, as God is my witness they’re not going to lick me. I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!”

---Scarlett O’Hara, Gone With the Wind

“As long as there was Bonnie, there was a chance that we might be happy. I liked to think that Bonnie was you, a little girl again, before the war, and poverty had done things to you. She was so like you, and I could pet her, and spoil her, as I wanted to spoil you. But when she went, she took everything.”

---Rhett Butler, Gone With the Wind