Check in if you think "Gone with the Wind" and overbloated boring movie

[LynneSin]

I have no clue why people like this piece of overacted schlock! Am I alone in the world with these thoughts?

[begin_within]

1. Frankly, my dear...

it has some good moments (the burning of Atlanta) but sitting through 4 hours is kind of a task rather than a joy. They should never try to make a single-sitting movie out of a whole novel. Only out of a short story.

[Demoiselle]

2. Here! (And hear hear, too.)

And that's without even getting into the incredible premise that everything and everybody was gloriously happy before that nasty Mr. Lincoln ruined everything.

[Bucky]

3. Sadly, Scarlet O'Hara was the second most racist feminist of the 19th century

Right behind Elizabeth Cady Stanton (whose racist rhetoric probably cost her a spot on the one dollar coin).

[nolabear]

4. Not at all. The book and movie were both of their time, and quite brilliant.

As a Southerner I find the whole thing a little painful because of what it is, The Old South as seen through the eyes of Old Southerners, but the story's really about Scarlett as a reflection of the awful Grand Illusion of the time and place. She's more or less Madame Bovary set in the Antebellum South, a woman who is smart, and is so narcissistic that she's stunned when people refuse or can't just be extensions of herself, and live to satisfy her desires. Like many people with that particular problem, she's bright and sparkly and has created herself to attract, but she can't hold onto anything. So is the story constructed. So was the Old South constructed, of illusion and willful ignorance and a short, intense beauty built on the back of unbelievable suffering.

I think that's why any sequels have been horrific failures. At the end, she is looking toward "tomorrow" but there can't be a tomorrow. She's destroyed everything and will continue to do so as long as she doesn't change.

Thanks to all who get this far in my analysis. Lots of years of studying writing and humans and now believing my opinion is valid! LOL!

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. have you read Rhett Butler's People by any chance?

and I also agree that Scarlett was a metahor (if you will) of the old south

edit: my apologies to LynneSin for appearing in this thread.

[LynneSin]

8. You can post anywhere you like

:D

[nolabear]

18. No, haven't read it. The "sequel" to GWTW was a disaster. I'll look it up.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

30. Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig is an authorized sequel to Gone with the Wind. -

Fully authorized by the Margaret Mitchell estate, Rhett Butler’s People is a novel that parallels Gone with the Wind from Rhett Butler's perspective.<1> The book was unveiled on November 3, 2007<1> after several years of setbacks and two previous authors.<2><3> Both Emma Tennant and Pat Conroy had been previously commissioned by the estate to produce the book.<2>

McCaig chooses to disregard the novel Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley. He does not acknowledge its existence in the canon of Gone with the Wind nor does his novel incorporate any of its characters. McCaig's impression is that the Margaret Mitchell estate was "thoroughly embarrassed" by Ripley's novel.<4> The book attempts to present a semi-journalistic view of the life and times of Rhett Butler, while remaining faithful to the original Mitchell work. The Rhett-Scarlett love-story is downplayed in the book.

The novel begins with a duel which is mentioned in Gone with the Wind. This is the reason that Rhett is not received in Charleston. Eventually the novel flashes back to when Rhett is twelve. It continues through the time until Gone with the Wind and retells the story. The story is not completely from Rhett's perspective. It proceeds to tell other moments from the time during the original story and then proceeds to add a new ending to the story. The book only goes a short ways past the timeline of Gone with the Wind (unlike the sequel Scarlett, which travels several years further).

more at link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhett_Butler%27s_People

[Hosnon]

12. +1. nt.

[nolabear]

19. BTW I want to add something--I don't think the book was very well written.

Margaret Mitchell tapped into something essential but as someone else here said, once I was a grownup I wasn't at all impressed with the writing. So my "brilliant" comment wasn't about a great feat of literature.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

29. why, specifically, were you unimpressed?

it was a certain style of the day, was it not?

while, I totally understand that there was a niche audience for the story/plot line... I would like to know if it is a grammatical or sentence structure, or what is it that makes you decide that it is not a great feat of literature in your mind.

[LisaL]

25. The sequels weren't written by the author of the original novel.

What exactly can one expect from a sequel written by a different author?

[WolverineDG]

33. Scarlett was a bit Johnny One Note, even in the book

when I read the book, I was struck at how strong the female characters were, as opposed to the male characters. It's completely opposite in the movie (thanks to Mr. Gable :cough: ). Scarlett's only motivation behind everything she did (marrying her first husband, then her sister's beau, then Rhett) was to keep hold of Tara. For what? Because her daddy said so? In the end, it's the only thing she's successful at. All of her marriages were disasters. Her parenting skills were zero (coulda knocked me over with a feather when I read the book & found out she had more than 1 kid), she'd alienated her sisters (I think one just up & disappears altogether), Melanie, the only person who could stand her, died & she's left with stupid, dumb Ashley, which I could never understand why she was so obsessed with that wimp anyway.

Then along came the Alexandra Ripley book & while she picked up on the "one note" business, she shifted it to Rhett instead of Tara & turned Scarlett into a wuss. Uh-uh. No way. No how.

dg

[LibertyLover]

5. Back in the 1970s it was re-released and my mom

wanted to see it again and wanted me to see it. I had read the book in high school and thought it was pretty awful. But I didn't want to say no to mom, so over we went to the movie theater. Now, perhaps it was because I was coming down with a nasty cold and feeling miserable, but damn I thought the movie was awful. It was way too long, the acting was overblown and the story line uninteresting as far as I was concerned. I will admit that the burning of Atlanta scene was kind of interesting, but only because I knew the backstory on it. I've never bothered to watch the movie again - once was enough.

[MicaelS]

7. No, I hate GWTW.....back when it was first released on video tape

And boy does that date me, I rented it, and thought "What a piece of crap. This thing is just a 4 hour long soap opera." The documentary on TCM about the making of GWTW was actually better than the the movie itself.

[Deep13]

9. I spent the film rooting for Sherman.

There wasn't a single sympathetic character in the whole movie. I was home sick one day and watched it because I had never seen it and wanted to see what the fuss was about. My wife had it on VHS. Nice scenery to be sure, but that was it.

[LynneSin]

10. A local art-house theater showed it on a Saturday afternoon

After the "As God as my witness I'll never go hungry" scene the movie faded to back and lights came up. I thought the movie was done and I was like "Thank goodness I can go home now"

Then someone stopped me to remind me there was 2 more hours to the movie. I should have just kept on walking.

[HappyMe]

11. No, you aren't alone.

It was way, way too long. And schlock is a good word to describe it.

[hedgehog]

13. I would love to see a re-make made with a new script - keep the

story line but alter the point of view.

Maybe we'd even get a chance to see Ashley and his buddies out threatening freed slaves.

[LynneSin]

14. In the modern version Scarlett would tell Rhett to 'Go F*)# Yourself'

and then turn Tara into an Organic Farm/Commune for former Confederate Soldiers and Free Slaves who wish to leave a peaceful, harmonious life.

[hedgehog]

16. I was thinking of sticking to the story pretty much as is, but altering the POV.

[Bunny]

17. Try this - The Wind Done Gone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Done_Gone

Plot summary

The plot of Gone with the Wind revolves around a pampered Southern woman named Scarlett O'Hara, who lives through the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The Wind Done Gone is the same story, but told from the viewpoint of Cynara, a mulatto slave on Scarlett's plantation and the daughter of Scarlett's father and Mammy; the title is an African American Vernacular English sentence that might be rendered "The Wind Has Gone" in Standard American English. Cynara's name comes from the Ernest Dowson poem Non sum qualís eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, a line from which ("I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind") was the origin of Mitchell's novel's title as well.

Sold from the O'Haras, Cynara eventually makes her way back to Atlanta and becomes the mistress of a white businessman. She later leaves him for a black aspiring politician, eventually moving with him to Reconstruction Washington, D.C.

The book consciously avoids using the names of Mitchell's characters or locations. Cynara refers to her sister as "Other", rather than Scarlett, and to Other's husband as "R" instead of Rhett Butler. Other is in love with "Dreamy Gentleman" (Ashley Wilkes), although he is married to "Mealy Mouth" (Melanie Wilkes). The magnificence of the O'Haras' house, Tara, is reduced to "Tata" or "Cotton Farm", and Twelve Oaks is renamed for its builders, "Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees".

Legal controversy

The estate of Margaret Mitchell sued Randall and her publishing company, Houghton Mifflin, on the grounds that The Wind Done Gone was too similar to Gone with the Wind, thus infringing its copyright. The case attracted numerous comments from leading scholars, authors, and activists, regarding what Mitchell's attitudes would have been, and how much The Wind Done Gone copies from its predecessor. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit vacated an injunction against publishing the book in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (2001), the case was settled in 2002 when Houghton Mifflin agreed to make an unspecified donation to Morehouse College, a historically African American college in Atlanta, Georgia, in exchange for Mitchell's estate dropping the litigation.

[raccoon]

15. It was considered Holy Writ by some female relatives when I was growing up,

and I loved the book as a teenager.

I tried to listen to it on audiobook maybe 5 years ago. It just dragggggged......I didn't get past the first chapter.

Edited to add: To answer your question, yes, I do think so now. Book was way overrated too.

[av8rdave]

20. Terrible movie

Poorly acted, poorly written, with characters and a story that were both impossible to get interested in.

[Ikonoklast]

21. Is me saying that I wanted every character in that bloated mess

to die in the crossfire of battle a bad thing?

[applegrove]

22. I related to Melanie when I read the book as a teen. I did a year of 'Slavery in the US' history at

university and was quite embarrassed I ever liked that book.

[quakerboy]

23. OMG

YES!!!.

Its possibly the worst movie that people often proclaim to appreciate. I am convinced that most of them have never watched it. I found absolutely nothing enjoyable in that POS.

[madinmaryland]

24. I have always enjoyed watching "Gorn with the Wind".

:P

[pokerfan]

26. Gone with the Wind in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies...

http://www.angryalien.com/aa/GWWbuns.asp

[MiddleFingerMom]

27. I've tried to watch it all the way through several times... and grown bored each time.

.
.
.
I have the same problem with "The Maltese Falcon".
.
.
.
In the same vein, try as I might... I just can not stand nor understand Shakespeare,
though I've really really tried at several stages of my life.
.
.
.

[NV Whino]

28. No matter. I still cry when the kid dies.

[Forkboy]

31. The part where the guy got his leg sawed off was cool.

:evilgrin:

[GoCubsGo]

35. My mom and aunts took me to see that film when I was 6.

That horrid scene was the only thing I remembered from it for decades. I couldn't bring myself to watch it again until I was in my 30s. I turned it off during the amputation scene. Still can't stomach scenes like that.

[Orsino]

32. Most movies of the so-called Golden Age appear overacted and schlocky to my modern eye.

GWTW tries so hard to be epic that the results are briefly hilarious, then dull.

[Joe Fields]

34. It was a great movie.

[JeffersonChick]

36. Ugh. I had to read it in high school

During my freshman-sophomore summer. I hated it. Didn't like the movie either.

I also recently re-read "The Great Gatsby" and "Catcher in the Rye", and I wonder why the hell they're so hyped as well. Esp Catcher in the Rye - I found that to be totally banal, anti-climactic.

[progressoid]

37. Yep - I tried to watch the whole thing once.

Just couldn't do it. :yawn: