G | 3h 58min | Drama | 1940
Based on Margaret Mitchell’s novel, the Oscar-winning Civil War romance “Gone with the Wind” (GWTW), a movie about love for home and country, redefines what it means to be manly, womanly, and deeper still, what it means to love in the first place.
Southern belle, Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) nurses two obsessions: herself and her cotton plantation, Tara. She’s besotted with neighbor Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), but he weds his saintly cousin, Melanie (Olivia de Havilland), then heads to war. Scarlett weathers hardships, and two husbands, who die in turn. She marries Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), who lavishes care on her and their baby Bonnie. But Scarlett and Ashley still pine for each other. Livid, Rhett forces Scarlett to confront the virulence of her narcissism.
GWTW’s title letters slide westwards; eastwards, the camera pans an Old South landscape. That predicts Mitchell’s dramatic device of war, not between combating soldiers, but between competing values; a war within, even if some battles must be fought, as Scarlett suggests, “another day.”
Equality Flows From Empathy
GWTW’s character arcs redefine masculinity and femininity as its characters find (or forfeit) courage, patriotism, and love. But in every instance, true masculinity recognizes, even reveres, true femininity and vice versa.
Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) and Scarlett O‘Hara (Vivien Leigh), in “Gone With the Wind.” (MGM/MovieStillsDB)Selfishness perverts Scarlett’s femininity, too. Like Ashley, she pretends. Worse, she thrives on one-upmanship, longing to possess her lover, any lover, the way she controls a patch of land; she marries compulsively, as if to demonstrate deathless desirability. Indicting Scarlett’s raison d’être of rights over responsibilities, Rhett likens her to a thief who “isn’t the least bit sorry he stole, but he’s terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail.” Her conceit pulls her within reach of feeble men, pushing her beyond reach of the self-assured.
Already masculine, Rhett is more so when he transcends self-absorption. Watch how he treats the women in his life: Scarlett, Melanie, Mammy (Hattie McDaniel), and Belle Watling (Ona Munson). Following even a glimpse of Scarlett’s courage, amid an Atlanta ablaze, Rhett sheds his cowardice. He enlists. The best femininity draws the best masculinity from him. He’ll defend such women even when they appear indefensible or when his reputation or life is threatened. That same Rhett responds with thoughtlessness, even anger, when spited by Scarlett.
Asked for jewelry to help the war effort, the married Melanie and widowed Scarlett give up their wedding rings. Rhett knows who’s truly sacrificing. He redeems and returns Melanie’s ring. His sincere handwritten note salutes the sacrifice of “great lady.” For Scarlett, he reserves nothing more than a sarcastic postscript.
To Melanie, the best days are “when babies come.” Rhett so admires her that he names his daughter “Bonnie” after Melanie uses that word. Forced to be with a loveless Scarlett, he pilfers the matronly advice of neighborhood ladies in bringing up Bonnie; to Mrs. Merriweather, “there must be a great deal of good in a man who could love a child so much.”
Mammy is one of the few people whose respect Rhett craves. In turn, when Rhett’s inconsolable over Bonnie’s death, it’s Mammy who asks Melanie to console him; he opens the door to Melanie that he’s shut to everyone else.
Melanie likely won’t have more babies because doctors say, she can’t; Scarlett can but won’t out of vanity for her maidenly figure, and a lingering longing for Ashley. In that tenderest of scenes, Rhett’s agonizing over his irritability that triggered Scarlett’s miscarriage. Melanie reassures him, Scarlett will recover. Why? Melanie plans to have another baby herself. Rhett balks, “You mustn’t risk it, it’s too dangerous.”
Melanie’s dismissive, “Children are life renewing itself, Captain Butler, and when life does that, danger seems very unimportant.” Rhett’s seated. But he might as well be kneeling. Reverentially, he kisses her hand. She places her hand on his head, as if blessing him.
