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Review: On this
page I will provide reviews of a few major classic films.
I first saw
“Gone with the Wind” at around age 11 (in 1954—you can do the algebra I
problem to calculated my age, as a “word problem”) with my cousin on a Sunday
afternoon at, as I recall, the Arlington Theater on Columbia Pike
(in Arlington, VA). My father had called this film “the best movie
ever made.” Given the length and monumental character of this film classic,
going to it was a big family outing. Kids were supposed to brace themselves
for Rhett Butler’s (Clark Gable) famous last line, “Frankly, my darling, I
don’t give a damn,” before he disappears into the southern fog. Kids were
enhanced with the idea of a story of a woman (Scarlet O’Hara, played by
Vivien Leigh) in love with two different men (Rhett, and the soft-spoken
Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard)). In the 50s that was a big no-no.
We all know that
Margaret Mitchell became famous for this sole long novel. There is a
fine-print motion picture edition with many Technicolor illustrations, all
fit into 391 pages (published by Macmillian in 1940). I think I
read it for a book report in 11th grade English, and today
English teachers could use it as an illustration of point of view in writing
a novel. Mitchell writes most of it in third person limited, but once in a
while ventures into omniscience as she imparts a lot of Civil War history.
Literary agents tend to advise new novelists to be very faithful and
consistent in the point of view.
Of course we all
know the basic setup of this Harlequin-like romance. Scarlet has a
privileged, undeserved life of wealth, supported by slavery. It is taken away
from her in a kind of purification, by General Sherman’s march, literally
(after her harrowing escape from burning Atlanta). A whole way of life,
“gone with the wind,” a threat that our own society could face today because
of the outrage of others. She uses her wits and selfishness to get
everything back, after the Intermission, only to lose out on Love with both
men. Rhett, of course, is her match for manipulative skill. Perhaps Scarlet
is motivated by the fact that, as Mitchell says in the first sentence, she
“was not beautiful.”
Documentaries
have been made about the movie itself, an early Technicolor period spectacle,
that moves from set to set in blocks (Tara, Twelve Oaks, Atlanta). They
will even report that Vivien Leigh was asked to work on “her
bosom.” As the film progresses, the scenes tend to pick up in pace
and sometimes seem hurried, even for a long film. The spectacle of the
casualties in Atlanta (“oh, the nausea…”), the escape form the
centerpiece. But there are so many memorable scenes, like “quittin’ time” on
the plantation, then Scarlet planting herself in her burned out plantation,
the gals worrying that they will become old maids while Scarlet has two men,
Prissy taking care of Melanie and crying when she dies (the loyalty of the
slaves, even after the War, is quite striking). Or the scene where daughter
Bonnie dies in a horse-riding accident (anticipating Christopher Reeve,
perhaps), or where Scarlet rolls down the stairs.
The morality
play inherent in the novel and film bear notice. Scarlet grew up believing
her world was right, because she was willing to adhere to religious and
family values. But that world was taken from her, by war, because it was
based on a serious moral flaw—the involuntary servitude – aka slavery -- of
others who were kept subordinate (blacks). Yet even among slaves there was
blood and family loyalty, and a willingness to put family and even loyalty to
master over activism and a desire to make things right in a universal moral
sense of what we think of social justice and fundamental rights in a liberal
democracy. This dichotomy is always with us.
The music score
my Max Steiner is memorable, with one of moviedom’s most schmaltzy
themes.
Cold Mountain (2003:
Miramax/Image), directed and written by Anthony Minghella (The
English Patient; The Talented Mr. Ripleu), is Miramax’s annual
“big” historical film. (I think the Miramax distribution mark means that the
film is still independently rather than studio funded, which, given the
freedom offered by technology, is becoming more common.) Of course,
everybody says that this is an application of Homer’s Odyssey to a Civil War
setting (Charles Frazier’s episodic novel), as a Confederate deserter Inman
(Jude Law) sloshes home from the Battle of Petersburg to his lover Ada Monroe
(Nicole Kidman), an overly protected belle (of the Scarlet tradition) who has
been brought down to earth back in Cold Mountain, NC after her minister
father (played by Don Sutherland) perishes, and she is “rescued” from
manual-labor incompetence by her hired friend Ruby Thewes (Renee Zellweger).
(Oh! – I remember those lectures from my own father about “learning to
work!”) In fact, it is Zellweger’s earthy dykish character, who brings Ada to
earth about the realities of practical hard work with your hands (aka
cultural revolution – “I can embroider but I can’t darn!”)) who takes
the film over a bit into the area of Coen Brothers-style satire,
though not as pointed as their Odyssey screenrwriting adaptation O
Brother, Where Art Thou? (I loved the scene where Roby decapitates
the rooster!) Jude Law takes a different route towards matinee idolship:
no buffed creature, but rather scruffy and hairy and male-aged to the point
of having a widow’s peak hairline, he stays believably grizzled throughout.
Much is made by film buffs of the fact that much of the film was shot
in Romania (to reproduce an unspoiled Appalachia-like world) but
the credits also list both Carolinas and Colonial Williamsburg.
This was the
last movie my mother went to before her passing (at the end of 2010), several
years before that, with a friend.
Giant (1956,
Warner Bros., dir. George Stevens, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, 201
min, PG-13) is just that, a sprawling epic about generational wealth
in West Texas. Jordan Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson) visits
a Maryland farm (the film opens with a steam train approaching the
farm) to buy a horse and falls in love with the daughter Leslie Lynnton (Elizabeth
Taylor). She comes back with him, on the train, and takes up life
in a ranch house on an absolutely flat staked plain more or less
near Amarillo. James Dean plays the irrepressible and often drunk Jett
Rink. Toward the end of the film there is a memorable racial confrontation in
a restaurant. This film was shown in a revival at the Inwood in Dallas in
the 1980s.
Doctor Zhivago (1965, MGM,
dir. David Lean, based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, music by
Maurice Jarre, 197 min, PG). I saw this at the Capri in
downtown Kansas City, MO on a cold December night while a
graduate student at KU. The story builds in layers of narration,
starting with a young woman (reported by the narrator Vegraf Zhivago,
meeting her at a power plant) who may be the daughter of physician-poet Dr.
Yuri Zhivago (Omar Shariff) and Lara Antipova (Julie
Christie). The activity is driven by Kamarovsky (Rod Steiger)
(her mother’s lover) and Pascha (Tom Courtenay). After an
assassination attempt, they are driven out of the country on a train East
(through the Urals, where the intermission occurs) and then live in a snowy
paradise in Siberia. This story has been remade twice with TV
mini-series in 2002 and 2005.
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