HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: GONE WITH THE WIND 70th ANNIVERSARY ULTIMATE COLLECTOR'S EDITION - Page 2

I did.  And I didn't even get to my Target until 11:30 this morning.  But I think I really lucked out because there was no $12.99 sticker on the shelf for the title.  For some reason, they weren't flying out the store when people thought they were $39.99 a pop. 

At my Target, the bulk of the special deal DVD & Blu-Ray stock wasn't on the shelves in the regular department, but in green pre-fab cardboard displays in another part of the store near the check-outs. The Target person who directed me toward them called these displays "shippers." The $12.99 Blu-Ray display had lots of other titles besides GWTW. In the regular department, there was a rack of Blu-Rays with a "$12.99 Sale" cardboard placard at the top of it, but the individual stickers on the shelves had the regular price, confusingly enough.

I got the last copy at the Burbank store at about 9:00 p.m.  I already had the box set, but I love the cover of the one-disc version, and I'm also tired of opening up that big velvet box and digging out the DVD, so for $12.99 I thought I'd get it.

Quoting Rob Ray:

"That's always been the movie's biggest flaw. The section of the story covering the war and the south's defeat is so compelling that Selznick and his writers spend more screen time covering the first half of the book to the detriment of the second. The second half of the book's historical background deals with the politics of Reconstruction which Hollywood wisely didn't want to touch. That left them with just the marital woes of the Butlers and the story's historical sweep with all those Ben Hecht titles are gone with the wind as well."

"GWTW" is NOT about the Civil War; the Civil War is the backdrop. A quote from William Goldman's "Adventures in the Screen Trade" applies directly (Goldman, for those new to this, is a screenwriter with two Oscars -- "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "All the President's Men"). Said Goldman:

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"You think 'Gone With the Wind' couldn't have been 'Mandingo'? The creators of the Mitchell classic made some genuinely remarkable decisions. Here's one, for example. 'Gone With the Wind' centers around the time of the Civil War. Well, one thing that movies have always done well is action. Big battle scenes. Great hordes of soldiers doing and dying, cannons blasting away.

"Well, there isn't a whole lot of that in the movie. Some, sure, but it would have been easy, even logical to add in twenty minutes, say, of surefire battle stuff and cut twenty minutes of Scarlett and Rhett. But they didn't. What did they cling to in 'Gone With the Wind'?

"Scarlett and Rhett."

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In other words, GWTW is about Scarlett and Rhett. They're what's special about the book, not the Civil War. You want the Civil War, call Ken Burns.

Hmm..I really cannot agree with Goldman's glib assertion that GWTW is not about the Civil War. Just because there are no battles does not mean it is not about the war. It is very much about the dying out of a way of life and a culture which culminates in the Civil War experience. Scarlett, for all her apparent selfishness, has schoolgirl ideas of romance and noble gentlemen; which is part of why she loves Ashley. She loves the idea of Ashley more than the real thing. The notion of Ashley being a "gentleman" and Rhett nothing more than a cynical adventurer drives much of the story, and this is related to the aristocratic plantation world of the Old South and its sudden cessation after the war. No, the film is not about the battles of the Civil War, but the causes and effects of the Civil War are very much a part of the story. Likewise, an authentic Civil War battle movie may miss some of the particulars of class and lifestyle that is in a story like GWTW.

GWTW could be set in a different time, but it would have to be one with a similar class situation with the backdrop of a dying way of life. Mrs Miniver does not contain battle scenes either, but it is very much a WWII story. I suppose you can take any plot from any story and movie it to a different time (e.g. Emma and Clueless), but something important of the original is always lost when this is done.

The novel GWTW is about how the death of a civilization affects its inhabitants. The Civil War is what Hitchcock would call the MacGuffin, the catalyst that motivates the immediate story we really care about. The Scarletts and Rhetts of the world, those who have the instinct for survival at any cost, survive, and the Ashley and Melanies who retain their honor and self-respect are winnowed away. The movie retains this idea until the last hour when, for several necessary reasons, it shifts into pure melodrama.

 

The last third of the book deals with how Scarlett’s thirst for wealth and security was impacted by the politics of Reconstruction and how she manipulated the new social structure for her own selfish ends. But since this meant dealing with the racial, social and regional prejudices brought to the fore by the Yankee occupation, Selznick wisely wasn’t going to go there any more than he had to with Frank Kennedy’s story.

 

And since the movie was already three hours along by this point, when Scarlett and Rhett marry, all the focus was placed on them and all further historical context was jettisoned.  Gone are characters such as Will Benteen who represent the new agricultural South. The first three hours of the movie’s version of the story could only take place in 1860s Georgia. The last hour could take place anywhere. The frequent use of title cards to set the historical backstory abruptly stops. That’s the movie’s structural flaw I spoke of in my earlier post, but it’s one that really couldn’t be addressed without having a movie that was over five hours long.

 

GWTW is one of my favorite movies, but I always thought it was a shame that the final segments play like soap opera.  It’s a very compelling soap opera, but it’s not the vast canvas of the earlier sequences. It would be hard to make the movie any better than it is, but the fact remains, Margaret Mitchell’s immediate story was retained to the end but the historical backdrop was overlooked in the final hour due to time and the fact that in the final analysis, it is indeed Scarlett and Rhett’s story and not the Old South’s.

It's an observation more than a criticism, but as with most movie adapations taken from literature, if you want the full story, read the book.

The movie area of the Target in Traverse City, Michigan looked like a bomb went off when we got there around 2pm. I found one copy of GWTW, but there was no sign indicating it was still on sale for $12.99. It didn't matter anyway, since I ordered a copy of the two-disc set from Amazon.uk.

I watched that version today, and was amazed at how good this old film looked on BD. It certainly has never looked better on a home video format. It was a joy to have Scarlett annoy me for four hours again. That woman was no heroin.

Very glad I (or rather, my wife) picked up the 1-disc version from Target for $12.99.

Finally got around to seeing this from beginning to end for my very first time (along w/ my 10-yo son who actually liked it enough to not take a break at intermission even though I wanted to ).  Don't think I've ever seen more than an hour or two of it overall, and this BD was a real treat for my very first complete viewing of it.

Will be passing on our old, never-watched DVD of it to my mother-in-law -- it's apparently her favorite film of all time according to my wife.

_Man_

I saw Gone With the Wind on the big screen this past weekend and kept track of the cropped shots. I thought I would post a definitive list for future reference:

 

1. The opening shot of Tara

2. The shot of Scarlett running down the driveway

3. The cows coming down the hill at quitting time which leads into

4. Slaves returning to the quarters at dusk which leads into

5. Gerald riding his horse home through the fields and creek

6. The pullback shot of Gerald and Scarlett under the oak tree

7. The sign of Twelve Oaks before the BBQ which leads into

8. The carriages coming down the driveway at Twelve Oaks

9. The shot of Scarlett in the hallway at Twelve Oaks, calling to Ashley to enter the library with her

10.Master shot of the cowshed after Scarlett talks to Dr. Meade

11.Scarlett entering the garden during the "As God is my Witness" scene (masking didn't seem as severe)

12. Pullback of same scene leading into intermission

13. Melanie running down the hill in Part 2 when she sees the "soldier" coming to Tara.

14.The final pullback shot of Scarlett under the oak tree at Tara.

 

I'm pretty sure that's it!  

I noticed the cropping when I last saw the movie in 35mm.  why are some shots cropped?

Adam, it's explained a little ways up in the thread, and more eloquently than I could put it. I just thought that I would post this list because I think it was unclear just how many (and which) shots were affected. Sad.

skimmed the thread twice now (earlier and just now in more detail) and see nothing about cropping until your post,  (I also did finds for "shot" and "crop", came up with nada) maybe the discussion was in another GWTW thread.

These shots were altered for the 1954 re-release, which was the first re-release in the widescreen era.  It was determined that the movie as a whole played fairly well when cropped to a mild widescreen with the exception of these few shots.  So, they were recomposed and reframed so that the theatre cropping would remove the black bar rather than any significant picture information.  Trouble was, these shots were then inserted into the negative and the originals were presumably destroyed.  The multiple generations of duping required to do all of this is why the shots themselves traditionally look muddier than the rest of the film, although they don't look too bad on the BluRay.