Over several nights via streaming I have re-watched the film Gone with the Wind.I ended up watching this movie because the other Olivia de Havilland The Adventures of Robin Hood was not available on streaming. I know I had seen Gone With the Wind before but it had been some time, decades, and I thought it useful to view the film and the story through my more experienced eye.

Directed by Victor Fleming with music by Max Steiner, and boasting one of the most colorful pallets ever, this movie stands as an achievement in cinema. Grand in scope and in scale and with a cast that is just terrific it is easy to see why this remained the most popular film for a very long time, but it’s impossible to ignore the propagandistic elements of the piece. The barbarity of slavery is utterly absent from the film. Every black character is actually a stereotype and evil of the plantation system is disregarded for a myth of noble benevolent slavers.

The story is about Scarlett O’Hara and follows her from her teenage years, starting right at the onset of the American Civil War, and though the ruin of her personal life as an adult. Scarlett loves Ashley but Ashley loves Melanie while rakish Brett Butler loves Scarlett. Through the war, reconstruction, and beyond we follow Scarlett as she schemes and uses people, always pining for Ashley who remains faithful to the clueless and naive Melanie. (Truly Melanie is tied right up there with Claudio from Much Ado About Nothing as the most gullible and naive character in western literature.) On this production I think Olivia de Havilland I think had the toughest job as an actor. She had to convince us that Melanie could be a real person and she did it. While Vivien Leigh deserve her accolades as an actor, I think Olivia did a far better job with much more challenging material.