Gone With the Wind Review

 

This film really opened my eyes to a different type of film. I had never seen a film like this one before, one this old. The film has real special effects such as, having to actually light the set on fire, use hundreds of people to create overview scenes, and also use real live animals. This showed be what it really took to create a genuine film like this in a time where they did not have the technology they do today. Without this class, I would most likely had never even had thought to watch this because the idea of an "old" movie would never had been appealing to me.

Gone With the Wind shows a perspective of what it was like during the Civil War. Throughout the film we see how the whites were considered "wealthy" and people of color were treated as slaves. This is what it was like during this time period while the North and South were at war with each other over if slavery was right or wrong.  The film makes the North seem like the "enemy" when in fact they were the ones fighting for slavery to be eliminated, the South believed that they had the right to own them.

The slaves in the film were mostly houseworkers and caregivers, and they played a big role in the film. They go one to treat them as if they were stupid and worth nothing. For example, the female lead named Scarlett was called to help deliver her friends baby but she did not know how and asked a young girl who was her slave. The young girl began to tell Scarlett that she also had no idea how to deliver a baby and then Scarlett began to beat her. This was just one specific example of how the film portrayed the slaves.

As I said before I did really enjoy the film but one thing I did not agree with was how glorified the southerners were. They were shown as perfect and innocent when they were the ones who had owned the slaves. Not the northerners. Maybe this is just my 2022 modern day mindset, but I feel as if it is definitely biased. Overall the film "Gone with the Wind" is a well put together film used to demonstrate life in the Antebellum and Civil War period in time.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/movies/gone-with-the-wind-battle.html

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/