So often, nostalgia about events and persons of our youth make them seem better and larger than life. We remember the special hand-beaten cake that Grandmother used to bake, the ice cream we licked from the dasher in the old hand-cranked freezers, the Christmas decorations in home and church, etc., as more delicious and more beautiful than most current fare.
So, with some anxiety and fear of let-down, I went to see the new Ted Turner release of Gone With the Wind. Would it be as gripping as I remembered it when I first saw it fifty years ago?
Would Scarlett be as indomitable, Rhett as dashing? Would the action or the dialogue seem stilted or dated? Would the colors be true – or jaded and out of sync like the color snapshots I took of our children 30 years ago look today?
I must report that Gone With the Wind in 1989 lives up to every cherished memory of the way it was long ago. As a movie, it is in a class by itself. It has clearly stood the test of time and its mystique is as compelling as ever.
No other movie even comes close in epic grandeur, in vivid characters who live and breather like real people, in dramatic theater, and in popular appeal. It’s no wonder that Margaret Mitchell’s 1,000-page novel has sold more copies than any book except the Bible, and David Selznick’s four-hour movie has been the biggest box-office success of any movie ever made.
This is the sixth release of Gone With the Wind, and money values have changed dramatically over the last 50 years. If we convert the dollar value of GWTW’s earnings over its 50-year life into 1989 dollars, we see that they amount to $2.1 billion to date. That compares with a mere $228.4 million earned by “E.T.”, which is currently touted to be the box-office champ.
We can thank Ted Turner for investing the $250,000 to transform the deteriorating and fragile 50-year-old film into a beautiful production. We can thank him for making this decision even though his marketing research warned that the investment would not pay off. Attendance figures in the last several weeks are so good that it looks like Turner will have the last laugh on that point.
In any event, Turner’s newly-restored GWTW is an artistic and theatrical success. He’s made us think it is the way it was when we first saw GWTW in 1939, but in truth it is probably better than it was then. The old “hot” Technicolor technique used originally has been toned down so that we can better enjoy the rich detail of the faces, costumes, interiors, and staging.
Margaret Mitchell herself described GWTW as “just a simple story of some people who went up and somewho went down, those who could take it and those who couldn’t.” It is, indeed, a story of survival – of those who survived and those who didn’t – and that’s why it is a saga for all seasons.
In recent weeks, the news media have engaged in some finger-pointing at modern Japanese textbooks which conveniently omit the history of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and atrocities against American servicemen. There is nothing new about censoring about embarrassing history; U.S. history books generally omitted or downplayed the savage war that was waged against civilians in Georgia in the 1860s, first by General Sherman’s troops who burned everything they could, and then by the Carpetbagger who stole what was left.
Gone With the Wind told history like it really happened – which was a revelation to many and a vindication to others. That history was the authentic backdrop to the personal lives whose stories were told with such realism.
After examining hundreds of high school reading lists, I must say that I find it very curious that Gone With the Wind is so conspicuous by its absence. Yet, these same reading lists are filled with unimportant contemporary fiction, usually at the expense of the classics from previous centuries.
Maybe it’s because the history, the respect for private property, and the personal values honored in GWTW are not in fashion among educators today. Maybe it’s because the educators who compile those reading lists think that modern schoolchildren haven’t the skills or the perseverance to polow through a book of 1,000 pages.
Whatever the reason, those who have no read Gone With the Wind have missed a vital part of American history, literature, and personal experience.
