Gone With the Wind

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With it's excellent cinematography and ahead-of-it's-time technical achievements (vivid color in 1939) combined with the accolades it has achieved (Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing, Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Art Direction, and Best Film Editing in addition to being AFI's choice for the 4th best film of all-time.) one would think that Gone With the Wind is a good movie. One would be wrong.

Here is the plot summary from IMDB:

American classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the American south during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Allow me to fill-in this description a little with some definitions:

American Classic: This movie is old. Also your parents and their parents remember it as something wonderful ("Oh look, at all the purty colors!")

Manipulative woman: Scarlett is a bitch. She has not even a single redeeming quality* (at least none that are depicted on screen. Perhaps when she walking through a field or something she relents and doesn't kick a bunny, but we never get to see this discretion. All we see of Scarlet is a spoiled, haughty, princess who is never happy and makes everyone around her miserable.

Roguish man: One of the few character who approaches the line of likability before running far away from it later, Rhett Butler would be played by George Clooney (he would be really good) if the film was remade (which I am firmly behind now).

Turbulent love affair: Apparently this is turn of last century speak for liking each other but being too stubborn and stupid to let the other know.

I don't want anyone to take my harshness the wrong way. I think that Gone With the Wind could have been a decent movie. Perhaps by replacing half the cast, re-writing the dialog and story, and cutting two hours out you could get to something worth watching. Of course any director who settled for what he did deserves to get the boot as well. Also I will say that the first half of the film seemed much better than the 2nd. After only two hours or so the mind has yet to tire of the sort of baseless and one-dimensional characters being presented. But I can tell you that if you add an additional two hours and then throw in one tragedy and down turn after another you get an experience that is somewhere between a dentist visit and and a dentist visit where your dentist is a blind baboon who works at the DMV.

* OK fine, she does persevere and get her hands dirty to save her plantation but that constitutes approximately 6 minutes of screen time in a 4 hour movie.