I bought the LIFE magazine photo issue commemorating this classic film over the holidays. The gist of its content reminds us the film portrays a contented Old South with happy slaves and isolated plantation owners, which sounds simplistic but true. Or maybe in Margaret Mitchell's tale some blacks were contented to be honorable servants to respectable white folk-like the O'Haras, Wilkes, Hamiltons and Kennedys in Civil War Georgia. For New Year's Eve I played the four hour DVD to relive this epic, timeless masterpiece from 1939.
The themes all came back to me: don't squander time, the land is the only thing that lasts, there's no winners in war, the Confederates were Americans too and love is blind; the triangle love story dominating the plot with Scarlett pining for Ashley the forbidden fruit while conceited Rhett seeks her attention. Set against Sherman's burning of Atlanta, carpetbaggers' promises of 40 acres/ mule, famine and defeat, Scarlett pulls herself together shooting the Yankee intruder on the stairs, rebuilding Tara and trying to get closer to Ashley at the lumber mill.
Events unravel of course as Scarlett marries Frank Kennedy for the $300 taxes; the shanty town muggers attack her in the carriage as Big Sam comes to her aid. Kennedy is later killed while Rhett and Dr. Meade bring a wounded Ashley back home posing as drunk from Belle's to avoid arrest by the Union Army. Rhett & Scarlett tie the knot and have a baby girl only to lose her from a horse accident. Melanie dies bringing Scarlett a reality check that Ashley always really did love Melanie, not her so Scarlett runs after Rhett walking away. She's left alone in the sunset with her Southern land.
I always found Scarlett so attractive because of her passionate zest for life, true to her desires and strength to carry on making a dress from drapery, growing cotton, saving the cow, caring for Melanie's childbirth and running a business. I laughed when she pulled her sister's pigtail. She gave Pork her father's watch, very touching. Her weakness was fear of rejection, manifested in her quest for Ashley Wilkes, the vulnerable, patriotic gentleman married to the faithful, re-assuring, magnanimous Melanie. You cant be rejected if you go for someone already taken, because loving an imaginary ideal outside yourself avoids that fear of rejection. In the end Scarlett finds love but it's too late as the heartless, selfish man from Charleston fades into the mist. She had her chance.
Love is for the happiness of the other person; for most of the story Scarlett only wanted to be in charge-Rhett was only money. Ashley the nice guy maintained their friendship telling Scarlett she doesn't know fear. But he's not on her wave length because Scarlett DOES know fear, and she has to grow up at the end. The triumph of the whole story though seemingly sad is love feels good until the two-edged sword hurts you, then you have to love yourself alone. You cant be afraid of that!
