|
|
|
David O. Selznick wanted Gone with the Wind to be somehow more than a
movie, a film that would broaden the very idea of what a film could be and do
and look like. In many respects he got what he worked so hard to achieve in this
1939 epic (and all-time box-office champ in terms of tickets sold), and in some
respects he fell far short of the goal. While the first half of this Civil War
drama is taut and suspenseful and nostalgic, the second is ramshackle and
arbitrary. But there's no question that the film is an enormous achievement in
terms of its every resource--art direction, color, sound, cinematography--being
pushed to new limits for the greater glory of telling an American story as fully
as possible. Vivien Leigh is still magnificently narcissistic, Olivia de
Havilland angelic and lovely, Leslie Howard reckless and aristocratic. As for
Clark Gable: we're talking one of the most vital, masculine performances ever
committed to film. --Tom Keogh |
|
|
|
_________________
|
|
|
|
Gone with the Wind, an American novel by Margaret Mitchell, was published in 1936 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. The novel is one of the most popular of all time,
and an American film adaptation of the same name
released in 1939 became the highest-grossing
film in the history of Hollywood
and received a record-breaking number of Academy Awards.
Mitchell's work relates the story of a rebellious Georgia
woman named Scarlett
O'Hara and her travails with friends, family and lovers in the midst of the
antebellum South, the American Civil War, and the Reconstruction period. It
also tells the story of the love that blossoms between Scarlett O'Hara and
Rhett Butler.
The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non
sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! gone
with the wind." Alternatively, the line also appears in the novel. When Scarlett
escapes Atlanta's bombing by the forces of the north, she flees back to her
family's plantation, Tara. At
one point, she wonders "Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the
wind which had swept through Georgia?"
|
|
|
|
|
Critics and historians regard the book as having a strong ideological
commitment to the cause of the Confederacy and a romanticized
view of the culture of the antebellum South. This is apparent from the book's
opening pages, which describe how Scarlett's beaux, the Tarleton twins, have
been expelled from university and are accompanied home by their elder brothers
out of a sense of honor: a metaphor
for the South's viewpoint on the statehood of Kansas.
Nevertheless, the book includes a vivid description of the fall of Atlanta in 1864 and the devastation of war (some of it absent from
the 1939 film), and shows a considerable amount of historical research.
Mitchell's sweeping narrative of war and loss helped the book win the Pulitzer Prize on May 3, 1937.
Alexandra
Ripley wrote the novel Scarlett, in 1991, as the authorized sequel to Mitchell's novel.
In 2000, the copyright holders attempted
to suppress publication of Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone, a book that retold
the story from the point of view of the slaves. A federal appeals court denied
the plaintiffs an injunction
against publication in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin
(2001), on the basis that the book was parody protected by the First
Amendment. The parties subsequently settled out of court to allow the book
to be published. Source:
Wikipedia Encyclopedia
|
|
|
|
Details
- Actors: Clark
Gable, Vivien
Leigh, Leslie
Howard, Olivia
de Havilland, Hattie
McDaniel, Butterfly
McQueen
- Format: Ac- , Box set, Closed-captioned, Collectors edition, Color,
Dolby, Remastered, Subtitled, Ntsc, Academy
- Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.
Read more about DVD
formats.)
- Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
- Number of discs: 4
- Rated:
- Studio: Warner Home Video
- DVD Release Date: November 9, 2004
- Run Time: 238 minutes
- Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
- Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
- Commentary by: film historian Rudy Behlmer (Unknown Format)
- Ultra-Resolution film restoration
- "The Making of a Legend: Gone With The Wind" the 1989 documentary
made by Selznick's sons (125 Minutes)
- Footage from 1939 Atlanta and 1961 Civil War Centennial Atlanta premieres
|
|
Other Movies You May
Like
|
|
|
|
and/or