Gone with the wind...

Similar to "War and Peace" by Sergei Bondarchuk as the best historic movie in Russia, the "Gone with the Wind" is the best historic movie made in America. In fact, it was on this day, on December 15, 1939 in Atlanta that we had its first premier. Based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) who won the Pulitzer prize for it, it was the first color movie to win the Oscar. Margaret Mitchell had some biographical inspiration behind the love story of Scarlett and Rhett. She was in love with her college classmate, but was deprived of happiness when he died in WWI.

The making of this movie cost $3.7 million of dollars (which would be $41 million today). The movie theater was decorated as the Mansion of O'Hara with the picture of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. Is there any more romantic and sad love story than that? There is a fine line between hatred and passionate love... Unless taken care of and cherished daily, love dies like a flower and bringing it back is almost impossible... True love can survive time and all obstacles if only it is fired by constant reciprocal passion...

Is there also a better dramatization of the US Civil War than that? Perhaps, it was the strongest anti-war movie ever made. Of course, the cataclysmic moment in the movie is when Scarlett O'Hara shouts in the barren field 'I'll never be hungry again!' Some argue that it is a racist movie because it portrays the slaves as intellectually deprived and silly. I do not like some of the scenes in the movie that assume that. Insofar as the book/movie tends to romanticize the South with its moral depravity and regressiveness inherent in anti-abolition and white supremacism (KKK), it has its shortcomings. But remember, this was still the early 1900s. Abolition aside, white supremacy was pervasive in all of the United States, not only in the South, up through the 60s and the Civil Rights Era. In addition, the anti-war sentiments are always attacked as insensitive to the race issue, since the War ultimately freed the slaves.

It is really one of the best movies on women's emancipation. Scarlett is the epitome of a strong woman, who is capable of surviving-- her utmost instinct-- by overcoming many of the customs of the Deep South. A Southern belle, who is not expected to do anything else but to marry and bear and educate children, transforms into a businesswoman, a powerful woman who can in fact define her own destiny. Then she also sexually awakens and comes to a realization of her body's wishes. There are many interesting transformations that occur with her that show that she is still in the 'process' of changing... Of course, she is far from perfect and not the role model for today's women. But 19th century women began many of the inner transformations that were continued by women through the 20th. Interestingly, Scarlett is hated by most in the society. That is the fate of strong and extraordinary women of all times!

I am never tired of watching this movie...