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Board,By chance I saw it last night on DVD (four fucking hours or so). Allowing for issues of datedness and grandiose scenes and overwhelming music, I couldn't decide if it was basically and essentially
a) meant to be about the U.S. Civil War and aftermath (with love story as 'backdrop') or
b) meant to be a love story (with civil war as backdrop).
Also, I was completely unprepared for the famous "I don't give a damn" line from Clark Gable. I'm not surprised the line caused surprise at the time: in all the accusations and counter-accusations leveled by the lovers (and some were pretty 'damning' and cut-the-crap sounding), NONE came close to this swear word.
Guyesqueness
Follow Ups:
Today in class I was gruffly barking at a student to remain "on task." Imagine my shock when I looked down to see that this 12-year-old boy was reading Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind"! He is the son of a white mother and a black father (who has had no contact with his father and is being raised quite happily by his mother and white stepfather). I asked him what he thought of the book and he said, "I like it." I can't wait to ask him for a more in-depth opinion after he has finished it. I was so slack-jawed I forgot to tell him to "finish that worksheet!"While the War Between the States (to use the Southern title; I do live in the last city the Confederate flag was finally lowered in during April 1865) is not what "Gone With the Wind" is about, I think it is more than a backdrop: Margaret Mitchell was raised in a house full of veterans of the war and their children, heard stories about the war and Reconstruction all the time, and was 12 or 13 before she realized the South had lost the war! This post-Reconstruction Southern view of the war is part of the warp and woof of the story; IMHO the specific events of the war and Reconstruction are as necessary to Scarlett and Rhett as the layout of Dublin is to the wanderings of Bloom and Dedalus. Not that I would compare GWTW to Joyce!
But it is a fun story, and I recommend you watch it in a theatre one day. It is a real hoot to hear women's reactions to that first shot of Clark Gable at the base of the stairs....the only time I've heard more moans is when Baryshnikov was dancing onscreen (at least, in non-X rated cinemas)!
Glad the ending surprised you. Wouldn't you agree that, sometimes, you just get tired of putting up with someone else's nonsense and decide to do something else? It took my sister three hours to tell her soon-to-be-ex husband the same thing that Rhett Butler says so succinctly. And it was just as big a shock to him!
IMO, (b); did you know that future superman was in that flick? ~AH
Yes, and Reeves originally was in "From Here to Eternity" as well.
... or at least in my opinion, is the indominatable nature of the human spirit.
"I've made and lost three fortunes and I'll..." etc.
For me, everything in the film is a backdrop for that.
...
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