Gone with the Wind Review

Movie Review: Gone with the Wind David O. Selznick’s Gone with the Wind, is a film based on the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell. This film is set in Georgia the spring of 1861, and follows the life of a wealthy southern belle, Scarlett O’Hara. While the film focuses on the trial and tribulations of Scarlett’s love life, it also depicts life during the civil war, and after the civil war. Although the films depiction of southern life is somewhat reasonable, there are some historical inaccuracies. Because the movie is based in Scarlett O’Hara’s romances, the film romancitizes southern life and omits or twists details about the lives of the less fortunate. Despite these inaccuracies, Gone with the Wind does a good job of illustrating the transformation of Southern culture during the Civil War. The film’s portrayal of white men and women living in the south is not far off, however, there are some exaggerations. The film makes it seem as though many southerners were wealthy planters that owned large houses on large plantations, but really only a selection of southerners lived as comfortable as the characters in the film. The men in the film are really secondary characters, so viewers do not get an in-depth look into their characters. What we do see are your stereotypical men: strong, proud, and dominating. One aspect of the film that could be considered as prejudice is the character of Southern men fighting for the Confederate Army, versus the character of the Northern men fighting for the Union Army. The Confederates are portrayed as stereotypical southern gentlemen, while the “Yankees” are portrayed as animals that looted and ravaged the Southern states. Since the men go off to war early in the film, the lives of white, southern women are further detailed. Women are supposed to be dainty, subserviant, and naïve (Smith). Of course, women at this time had really nothing else to look forward to except marriage, so these characteristics would most likely be true.

Cited: Boyer, Paul S. The Enduring Vision, A History Of The American People. 6th ed. 2008. Print. Brown, David. Race in the American South: From Slavery to Civil Rights . Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2007. Print. Gone with the Wind. Dir. Victor Fleming. Perf. Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Hattie McDaniel, and Olivia de Havilland. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, 1939. Film. Pillai, Prabhakar. "Slavery During the Civil War." Web.