What can I say about Gone With the Wind that hasn’t already been said by film historians and film scholars over the past 75 years? The film’s results speak for themselves. It won an unprecedented 10 Academy Awards, including Outstanding Production (Best Picture). To this day it remains #1 at the box office by a wide margin when you go by number of tickets sold. It is the #3 movie of all time on AFI’s list of 100 Greatest Movies, coming behind only Citizen Kane and The Godfather. This is truly a film worth celebrating.

Most all of us know the story. Scarlett O’Hara is in love with Ashley Wilkes, but he’s betrothed to marry his cousin Melanie. The dashing gun runner Rhett Butler becomes infatuated by Scarlett, and pursues her. Scarlett marries another man to make Ashley jealous, but he’s killed in the Civil War. Scarlett spends the war with Melanie and both of them fret for Ashley’s safety. Ashley comes back from the war for a Christmas furlough and nine months later, Melanie gives birth to their son. The problem is that Atlanta is under siege from Sherman and the city is burning down around them. Scarlett helps Melanie deliver her baby and implores Rhett to help get them out of Atlanta and back to Tara, the plantation and Scarlett’s childhood home. After getting them close enough, Rhett leaves them. Seeing all of the refugees makes him feel guilty that he didn’t take a more active roll in fighting the war, so he goes off to join the lost cause. Scarlett gets back to Tara where she discovers that her mother has recently died, and it’s made her father insane. The Yankees have been through and taken all of the crops and animals with them. Digging at the dirt, Scarlett vows that whether she has to lie, cheat, steal, or kill, she’ll never go hungry again.

The second half of the film shows Scarlett marry Frank Kennedy, the man that her sister wanted to marry, but she does it in order to get her hands on his money so that she can save Tara, which was under threat of foreclosure due to unpaid taxes that the Yankees had leveled on them. Then one day, Scarlett is attacked while riding her wagon through Shanty Town and one of her former slaves saves her life. Ashley and her husband organize a raid on Shanty Town and Ashley is wounded. Rhett and some others bring him back to the house and Rhett informs Scarlett as she dotes over Ashley that her own husband is lying dead in the creek having been shot through the head. Rhett finally gets Scarlett to agree to marry him, but it’s largely a marriage of convenience, since Scarlett still harbors her feelings for Ashley. The problem is that Rhett, for all of his cynicism, actually falls in love with Scarlett. They have a baby they name Bonnie, and Rhett feels real love for the first time. He takes her on a trip to Europe and figures they never need to see Scarlett again. However Bonnie gets homesick and convinces Rhett to take her back to Atlanta where Scarlett tells Rhett that she’s pregnant again. In a moment of heartlessness he tells her to cheer up, for maybe she’ll have an accident. She swings to hit him and he ducks, leading her to fall down the stairs and lose the baby. A short while later, Bonnie is riding her pony and she falls off and breaks her neck. Melanie, trying to have a baby against the doctor’s advice, dies a short time later. Rhett watches as Scarlett and Ashley comfort each other and leaves before Scarlett finally sees that Ashley is nothing more than a weakling who never really returned her love. She realizes that Rhett is the only man for her, but it’s too late. With his famous line about not giving a damn, Rhett walks out of her life. Continuing on one of the film’s themes, Scarlett vows to go back to Tara to think of a way to get him back knowing that tomorrow is a new day.

There are two words that come to mind when thinking about Gone With the Wind. The first word is epic. This is an epic film on many levels. It tells the epic tale of the fall of the South and it’s way of life, however that is more of a backdrop to the story of Scarlett O’Hara and how her selfishness and need for an unrequited love led her to lose everything, gain it all back, and then lose it again. Scarlett O’Hara is one of the most complex and deepest characters in the history of mainstream American cinema, and that also helps to make the film so epic. Everything is big in this film. It’s told on a grandiose scale that involves everything from the cinematography to the acting.

That leads me to the second word that comes to mind when reflecting on Gone With the Wind and that word is melodramatic. This is a very melodramatic film. There are scenes between Scarlett and Ashley, between Melanie and Ashley, and between Scarlett and Rhett that look like they’re the precursors to the modern-day soap opera with their over the top acting and played up musical score. The overlapping love stories add to the melodrama, as does the very melodramatic and tragic ending.

To me what makes this film so wonderful are the two main characters of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. This would be the third Best Picture Winner of the decade in which Clark Gable would play the leading man, and he seemed to have been born to play Rhett Butler. Certainly this is his most memorable and signature role. He played it with sophistication and panache that has made Rhett Butler one of the most iconic characters in the pantheon of cinema. He’s a cynical man who sees life with a realism that the idealistic would-be swashbucklers of the South couldn’t see as they enthusiastically prepared for war. He could see Scarlett for what she really was and was intrigued. This intrigue turned into infatuation and infatuation turned into love. By the end of the film, he is truly hurt that it seems he’ll never win Scarlett’s love. He’s then so hurt that when it appears that he has won it, he can’t believe that it’s true. As mentioned above, Scarlett O’Hara is one of the most complex characters I’ve ever seen in any film, and Vivien Leigh became her alter ego. Externally, Scarlett changes very little over the course of the film. However, she goes through a myriad of internal changes. She always remains spoiled and manipulative, however it’s how she uses those traits over the course of the film that define her condition. She goes from helpless to tyrannical. Spoiled to sophisticated. Essentially she changes to a soft little girl to a woman hardened by the extraordinary circumstances through which she’s lived, but never loses her childlike infatuation for Ashley Wilkes until it’s too late.

If you consider yourself to be a film buff, then this is a film you should see. It is an emotional film that has moments of levity. It is a serious film that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is an epic and it is certainly worthy of being counted amonst the greatest films of all time.

Did the Academy get it right?

Now, before you go thinking that this was a slam dunk, consider this list of films: Dark Victory, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights. Those were the nine films nominated against Gone With the Wind for Outstanding Production. By my count, eight of them are certified classics, and I’d be willing to bet that at least five of them could have won, had they been released during either the previous year or the following year. I would say that if 1939 wasn’t the strongest year of Oscar contenders, then it was certainly among ’em. Ultimately, though, it had to be Gone With the Wind. All of the films listed above are fine films, and some are exceptional. However there is something special about Gone With the Wind. Even when it was released, it was more of an event than any film that had been released before it. It has become a timeless film that only The Wizard of Oz can match of the films that were released that year. On a side note, has any director had as great a year as Victor Flemming did that year, when he directed both Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz? Ultimately, Gone With the Wind is one of the greatest film ever made, and despite the heavy competition, was clearly the best picture of the year.