"Gone with the Wind" casts a long shadow

I am a big cinephile. And while I have never been a huge fan of GWTW, I have to admit it is a great film. I stumbled on it last night on Turner Classic Movies, and I found myself feeling sorry for Scarlett O'Hara at the end. But I also found Rhett Butler sympathetic in ways I hadn't previously considered - a businessman with low expectations from life, he is surprised by the depth of love he grows to feel for Scarlett, largely through his love for her daughter.

Nevertheless, I find the story on the whole hokey, soap-opera stuff. But as an epic, I can't help but be impressed. Last night, I also watched most of a documentary on the making of the film, and seeing all the lengths that David O. Selznick went to in getting the film made, I am even more impressed. It's fascinating watching the screen tests for the various parts with the different actors and actresses.

Watching the movie and the documentary made me think more about the two main characters and the actors who played them. Clark Gable was the hot actor of the 30s, and of course he went on to make films up to 1961, but I don't see him as a great actor on the level of his contemporaries like Gary Cooper or Cary Grant. His range was very limited. I know most of the actors of his day to our eyes seem to be playing the same character in every movie, and that's what people went the movies to see, but that's not what I'm talking about. You very rarely get to Gable showing any range of emotion - he's tight, in control. GWTW stretches him more than most of his other films, but in the end he returns to his comfort zone. He speaks his lines with typical Gable sarcasm and condescension, and he's off, not to be controlled by any mere mortal.

People speak about Vivien Leigh with such hallowed tones, and I am at a loss to really get that. Would she have gotten half as far as she did if she were not married to Olivier? Probably not. But getting ahead through marriage is something that is still practiced to this day in Hollywood (Nicole Kidman's marriage to Tom Cruise being the one that comes most readily to mind). Again, within the style of what acting was like in those days, I suppose she did well. But put her up against Bette Davis - I mean, where is Leigh's Now Voyager or Of Human Bondage? Maybe if George Cukor had succeeded in finishing GWTW, giving the movie a tone more sympathetic to the women characters, I would have a different view of her.