ViewGuide

Created Jan 16, 2008 09:26PM PST • Edited Jan 16, 2008 09:26PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   Not only a classic, and a wonderfully entertaining movie, but a masterful example of rewriting history. Few films combine the sweeping epic with the romance and glory of Gone with the Wind, and certainly none had come close before this seminal film. Great acting combines with extrardinary cinematography, leavened with moments of brilliant comedy to produce a true film for the ages.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

   Clark Gable’s insoucient portrayal of Rhett Butler is a brilliant complement to Leslie Howard’s Ashly Wilkes: the canonical man of honor and responsibility.

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

   Here again there is a near perfect pairing between the brilliant performance of Vivian Leigh as the self-absorbed Scarlett With the ever-altruistic Melanie (Olivia De Havilland). Much as the Godfather can be seen as a film about the maturation and hardening of Michael Corleone, GWTW is in many ways the story of the trial by fire and eventual acceptance of adult responsibility by Scarlett O’Hara.

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

   When you think of co-stars you think of actresses who have large, but not quite leading roles. Gone with the Wind, instead, has some of the greatest female costars in small but critical roles. Brilliant performances by Hattie McDaniel as Mammy and the genius of Butterfly McQueen fine few parallels.

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

   There are a number of strong male co-stars in this film but few stand out, with the possible exception of Everett Brown as Big Sam (“It ain’t quittin’ time, till I says its quittin time.”)

10. Film

    Great 4.0

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    Great films don’t happen by accident. Every aspect of this film was put together with precision, every scene carefully laid out and timed, every dialog crafted.

12. Play Really Great 4.5

    Gone With The Wind is moved along by its dialog, and more important the relentless and inevitable story is relieved by the moments of humor injected into the script. All of this, and lines like “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn” and “I don’t know nuthin’ about birthin no babies.”

13. Music Great 4.0

    Excellent, and the theme went on to become a classic.

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Sweeping panormas, an incredible recreaton of a South that never existed, and the scene at the rail road station is among the strongest visual ever recorded

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

17. Sex Titillating 1.9

    A bit of flirtation

18. Violence Fierce 1.6

    It’s hard to make the civil war violence-free but nothing explicit is shown.

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

    This was 1939. The strongest word is “damn”

21. Reality

    Glib 1.6

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.2

    There is a bit of surrealism in Margaret Mitchell’s insistence on an antibellum south that defies history.

23. Biological Glib 1.2

24. Physical Glib 1.5

    The land as portrayed feels about right