Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn ....

Or do I? This weeks review is for the classic, Gone With The Wind. Made in 1939,in colour and winner of 8 Academy Awards. I'm glad I can say I have watched it, but I'm not sure if I would watch it again. I did like it though and I must say, I enjoyed the second half much more than the first. So what I am saying is that I enjoyed the last 6 hours of the movie the most.

Set in the American civil war, the movie follows Scarlett O'Hara (played by Vivien Leigh) and her ordeals. She is an interesting character and a more unlikeable, uncharming and annoying leading lady in a movie I haven't encountered since Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. Well I find Nicole Kidman to be unlikeable and uncharming all the time, so that is unfair to Moulin Rouge. We have a charming leading man in Rhett Butler, played by Clark Gable. Actually, he may not be charming, but any man who wears a flash suit, a slicked back hair do, and one of those pencil thin cookie dusters on their top lip, automatically looks like he could charm the pants off any lady. Mental note: I must grow a pencil thin moustache.

I find a few things interesting about this move:- this is the first "classic" movie I have seen where nobody smokes. Even more strange considering smoking was cool when it was made, and the fact that apparently both Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable smoked 4 packs of cigarettes per day in real life. No wonder the kissing scenes were so lacklustre - they both probably felt like they were kissing a burnt out tree stump.
Another thing was that half the important characters in the movie got killed while trying to jump a fence on a horse. Civil War, Schmivel war, the most common cause of death in this movie was while show boating on a nag.
Lastly, the movie runs for just under 4 hours, yet Scarlett and Rhett get engaged, married, honeymoon, have a baby all in the same minute. 1 minute later and the baby is now 5 years old. Talk about glossing over the important parts of life!
I really liked how this movie had an intermission. At around 4 hours in length I actually used the half time intermission to stretch my legs.

Now for the things that annoyed me about this movie. The main one is the background music. It is as if the producers said - "Hey we paid for an orchestra to play the background music, so they are going to play the whole time, no matter what." Sometimes the musical score is so obviously inappropriate, it detracts from the movie. It sounds like the music they now play at the Academy Awards when they want to drown out a speech if it is going too long. Another thing that annoyed me - it is just too damn long. I'm sure they could cut at least an hour out of the movie, particularly in the first half. Originally I was going to say that Scarlett O'Hara is too unlikeable to be the main character but that is exactly the way she is meant to be and makes the movie more enjoyable as it goes on.


Ratings time -
Gone With The Wind : 6 I don't give a damns, 1 pencil moustache
Spaghetti and Mediterranean Meatballs : 7 balls of mince
Coffee and Tim Tams : 9 chocolate smudged fingers