WELL MET – Day 13 (Gone With the Wind)

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The Film… Gone with the Wind (1939)
Director… Victor Fleming

Entering From Stage Left… Vivien Leigh in the role of  Scarlett O’Hara 

What Makes It Special …The actress, the costume, and the sheer Southern fantasy of it all.

As cinephiles know, The Search for Scarlett O’Hara was one of the biggest and flashiest moments of movie marketing in history.    Every major actress coveted the role.  1,400 unknowns were tested for it,  an effort that cost the studio buckets of money, but gallons of publicity ink.    And that was in 1930s media!  Can you imagine the obsessive focus it would garner today?

Over the years, a lot of the marketing mystique has been stripped away, and it turned out Vivien Leigh had nabbed the role a lot sooner than MGM legend would have us believe.    She had been in consideration since February 1938, and in negotiations for months.  But the idea that she just happened on the set as they were filming the burning of Atlanta was more fun for the newsreels.

In retrospect, it could never have belonged to anyone else. Leigh is Scarlett.  You read the book, you see her.   She was the perfect physical match (all right, so her eyes aren’t reallygreen, but that was nothing a bit of make-up, lighting, tinting and wardrobe couldn’t fix) and she nailed Scarlett’s maddening and intoxicating mix of stupidity, steel, and bitchiness better than any other actress could have. It’s rare that an actor or actress takes a beloved character of book or stage and runs away with it, making it inseparable from their own face and voice, but Leigh did.    You still hear the odd person saying she was all wrong for Scarlett O’Hara. Those people are stupid.

But I’m getting ahead of myself! Let’s focus on the intro, shall we?  It’s a quick and breathy one, just like the heroine herself. We zoom in on an impossibly grand plantation, through a stand of blooming magnolias (of course!) and onto the blue-coated backs of two red-haired boys. They’re talking to Scarlett, but we don’t get to see her until the last possible second. It’s the last wink of David O. Selznick’s marketing madness.  Are you going to be disappointed in her? Of course not.

There she is, the epitome of a Southern belle.    The scene is just dripping with “when chivalry took its last bow” stuff of the title card. It’s all dappled sunlight, courtly love, sweet magnolias, fabulous gowns, mint juleps, and happy slaves.   War — the war — is the stuff of childish conversation. Scarlett’s suitors are eager to talk about it, dying for it to happen, and Scarlett is utterly bored by it.   It’s a shadow on the happy scene, but only to us, because they’re wrapped up in their cocoon of wealthy, shaded bliss. What shatters their reverie isn’t the sound of cannon, but Scarlett going into a sulk at the news of Ashley Wilkes — her dream man, the one who will rule and ruin her life and so many others —  getting married.

Oh, fiddle dee dee.  Life is so hard.

Why It Resonates …  It’s the iconography of it all.  Gone with the Wind is a film that represents a number of things. It’s probably the epitome of the old Hollywood epic, released in the year generally assumed to be the very, very best of moviemaking.    Its lushness is a stark contrast to the war raging across Europe, and the Depression eating at the hearts and souls of your average American.    In truth, it’s more about the Depression than it is about the Civil War. Gone with the Wind is about “the good old days” of luxury and class, a fabricated notion of how wonderful life was before the government started bossing us around and trying to take what was rightfully ours.   When you consider that Jim Crow was still raging — and possibly at its very worst — in numerous places, you can just see what a heady fantasy this taps into.     Wouldn’t it be great if we could just go back to when they were happy working for us, and we were happy to take care of them in return?

But that’s getting into some sad and ugly territory, though it’s impossible to talk about Gone with the Windwithout touching it.  You just can’t have Scarlett O’Hara sitting on the porch, playing with her magnolia blossoms, and not know what makes it all possible.  It’s why it’s so alluring. She’s a princess, waited on hand and foot, with nothing pressing to do but look pretty and find herself a nice boy to marry.    The slaves even mix the juleps so she won’t break a sweat in the process of courtship.

But for me, this scene resonates because of Leigh, her performance, and the hair, costume, and make-up that makes her appear like a dewy, dreamy 16 year old.   She’s got round little cheeks, she’s happy as can be (well, until the Ashley news) and in total denial that war is about to rip her world apart, and leave her starving, alone, and bitter.    It’s an effective entrance because of her improbable character arc, and it’s hard not to picture this lovely lass when Rhett laments having not met her “before the war and hunger had done things” to her.     It’s also hard to picture those soft, flower-holding hands shooting a man, harvesting cotton, or yanking down the drapes so she can make a dress to prostitute herself in. Her biggest fear on this day is being bored at parties…and how to nab Ashley Wilkes.

Other Grand Entrances …   Is there ever!  Just about every character in this film swishes into frame in a defining way (ineffective Ashley, retiring Melanie, her red-faced, horse-galloping father, the slimy overseer, Mammy) but only one character has an entrance that rivals Scarlett’s.