Vivien Leigh makes this overlong romance worth the effort, though its indulgence of a slaveholding society cannot be brushed aside. The scale is impressive; the second half too often lets Scarlett’s troubles drag.
Gone with the Wind is worth the long evening for Vivien Leigh, though we would not recommend accepting its view of history for a minute. Victor Fleming’s film, produced by David O. Selznick, gives a selfish woman’s romantic troubles the scale and weight of a war drama. At 238 minutes, it has room to make those troubles absorbing and then to overdo them. It asks for considerable patience with Scarlett O’Hara, and Leigh supplies much of the reason to grant it.
Leigh makes Scarlett’s artificiality a pleasure to watch. The performance does not soften her appetite for attention or apologise for it, and that gives the romance a difficult, lively centre. Her selfishness keeps us interested in what she will demand next, even when we have little sympathy left for the demand. Romantic melodrama often works hard to make its heroine deserving, so there is pleasure in watching Leigh behave badly with such conviction.
Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler gives her a partner with enough presence to keep the exchanges from becoming a solo performance. Gable seems comfortable with the film’s extravagance, which helps make the romance persuasive when the writing threatens to labour it. Olivia de Havilland’s Melanie Hamilton and Leslie Howard’s Ashley Wilkes have less force in this company. Sidney Howard’s screenplay, adapted from Margaret Mitchell’s novel, remains so attentive to Scarlett that the people around her can feel like support for her next bout of unhappiness.
The panoramic Atlanta scenes give the production’s size a purpose: we can look beyond Scarlett and see war occupying a whole city. William Cameron Menzies’s production design makes those expanses convincing enough to hold our attention without a romantic quarrel to help. Ernest Haller keeps the colour controlled across the wide views, so it contributes to the action without making everything equally insistent. These passages give us a welcome opportunity to look beyond the central relationships.
Steiner’s score is less inclined to restraint. Its thunderous emphasis suits the size of the production, but it can insist too heavily on feelings the actors have already made clear. The second half grows soapier, and the pacing gives too many romantic difficulties more time than they need. The repeated emotional emphasis becomes tiring, particularly when the quarrels have ceased to surprise and the film is still giving them its full attention.
The more serious objection is the film’s affection for the slaveholding society it depicts. We winced at the cheerful portrayals of enslaved people, because their apparent contentment is used to make that society look benign. Hattie McDaniel gives Mammy force and authority, but the writing still treats service as a reassuring part of the social order. The film spends so much care on making that society attractive that its treatment of slavery cannot be dismissed as an incidental mistake.
Give it an evening when there is no need to hurry, and take an interval. A film this long benefits from a little distance, particularly once the quarrels begin to weigh more heavily than the war. Scarlett can wait while the kettle boils.
