Molly Haskell revisits "Gone With the Wind" in "Frankly, My Dear," a slim but rich volume from Yale University Press that persuasively explains why the 1939 film blockbuster it inspired continues to revolt and rivet Americans. To read it is to catch Scarlett Fever.
With its romanticized view of slavery and its rabid view of Reconstruction, the Margaret Mitchell's story perpetrated untruths. And yet it is impossible not to cheer for Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel (the first African-American to win an Oscar), the film's moral center and soul of the O'Hara family. (McDaniel famously defended herself from NAACP critics chastising her for her role in the film with the quip, "I would rather make 700 dollars a week playing a maid than seven dollars being one." ) And though Scarlett, the film's anti-heroine played with fiddle-de-dee perfection by Vivien Leigh is selfish and deceitful , she is, as Haskell so gracefully juggles the contradictions, "one of the great iconoclastic figures in movies."
With great humor and insight Haskell writes of "...the range of emotions attached to the film [that] fluctuate through time with the predictability of a love affair and its aftermath...."
Haskell clinically diagnoses "The Seven Stages of 'Gone With the Wind' : Love, Identification, Dependency, Resentment, Embarassment, Indifference, and something like Half-love again," which precisely characterizes my own complicated relationship to the film I first saw in the mid-1960s (when, like Scarlett, I heroized Leslie Howard's Ashley and didn't really appreciate Clark Gable's Rhett) and most recently watched two weeks ago on TCM as I was folding the laundry and marveling how much George Clooney has internalized Gable's rakish charm. (I also recalled Marlene Dietrich's 1939 diary entry: "Premiere of Gone With the Wind. Leslie Howard with orange hair. Now I've seen everything.") As a work of critical history and film history, I highly recommend "Frankly, My Dear."
Your thoughts -- kneejerk or considered -- on GWTW?
I also saw GWTW in the mid-1960s during its theatrical re-release. I had heard so much about it from my parents, who grew up with it and told me that they had seen it dubbed into many European languages during their trips there in the early 1950s. They said that it was always showing somewhere in European theaters and that it was great to see because they didn't need to speak a foreign language to understand it and just because it was GWTW. The last time I saw the film was also on TCM several weeks ago also. I've always loved it and been amazed by it. It's a long film that tells an epic story, which used to be better understood, because of the decreasing amount of American history that seems to be taught in school these days. (I wonder whether my 11-year old daughter would think of it.) Through its its rich visual imagery, dialogue, characterization and rhythm, the movie creates a world that seems completely real, which you care about from the moment you realize that you're inside Tara. Feckless and misguided as the Confederate soldiers may be, they mostly display great nobility, as do most of the other characters. Rhett and Scarlett are different from all of the other characters (and from each other, obviously, and their relationship and dialogue stands out against this background in high and memorable relief. This is all knee-jerk. It's a film where so many people know every frame and it seems like background to the rest of your life. As for George Clooney, to me he just seems to be a self-conscious, pale imitation of Clark Gable -- a handsome guy doing Clark Gable schtick. Leslie Howard's daughter wrote a wonderful book about her father called (I believe) A Quite Remarkable Father that contains a lot of amusing GWTW-related material, including anecdotes about Howard's own slightly embarassed feelings about his hair.— ccjroberts- I also saw GWTW in the mid-1960s during its theatrical re-release. I had heard so much about it from my parents, who grew up with it and told me that they had seen it dubbed into many European languages during their trips there in the early 1950s. They said that it was always showing somewhere in European theaters and that it was great to see because they didn't need to speak a foreign language to understand it and just because it was GWTW. The last time I saw the film was also on TCM several weeks ago also. I've always loved it and been amazed by it. It's a long film that tells an epic story, which used to be better understood, because of the decreasing amount of American history that seems to be taught in school these days. (I wonder what my 11-year old daughter would think of it.) Through its its rich visual imagery, dialogue, characterization and rhythm, the movie creates a world that seems completely real, which you care about from the moment you realize that you're inside Tara. Feckless and misguided as the Confederate soldiers may be, they mostly display great nobility, as do most of the other characters. Rhett and Scarlett are different from all of the other characters (and from each other, obviously, and their relationship and dialogue stands out against this background in high and memorable relief. This is all knee-jerk. It's a film where so many people know every frame and it seems like background to the rest of your life. As for George Clooney, to me he just seems to be a self-conscious, pale imitation of Clark Gable -- a handsome guy doing Clark Gable schtick. Leslie Howard's daughter wrote a wonderful book about her father called (I believe) A Quite Remarkable Father that contains a lot of amusing GWTW-related material, including anecdotes about Howard's own slightly embarassed feelings about his hair.— ccjroberts
- Last time GWTW played at the Ritz, I was loving it so much I couldn't stand the fact that there was a 15-minute intermission. Those 15 minutes were longer than the film's 222!— garyk
- I've commented on this same book (as well as on Armond White's review of it in the New York Times) at http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?cat=9— jrosenbaum
- VIEWED
- Commented
- News | Sports | Business | What's Happening | Restaurants & Food | Entertainment | Living | Marketplace | Jobs
