GWTW was on TV last night, on TCM, without commercial interruptions, in what must have been a restored version; sound and color were excellent. The 1939 film is approaching its 75th anniversary; In other words, the film portrays roughly the decade following the start of the Civil War, so we are as far removed in time from the release of the film as its release was from the events it portrayed.

It came out the year WWII started in Europe, the years when America was emerging from the Great Depression and Fascism and World War were looming on the horizon. My mother was 19 when she saw this film, and I know it affected her profoundly, she had personally experienced hunger during the Depression years and she adopted Scarlett O’hara as a personal heroine. We often spoke of it, and those times. I feel I know as much about that immediate post-Depression/pre-war era as anyone who didn’t actually live through it can.

I’ve seen the film many times, of course, but this time I promised I would look at it differently. I chose not to see it as a historical document scrutinizing the times it portrayed, or as a snapshot of the vision of the Civil War held by Americans in the late 30s (a vision, by the way, not too different from the one I was force-fed in school in rural Florida as a youngster). The film paints, indeed its major theme, is the great ante-bellum civilization that existed prior to the Civil War, and its subsequent destruction. Remember, there were veterans of that conflict still alive when the film was released, this was not all schoolbook history. The social and economic causes of the war were glossed over, and I’m sure the genteel world of plantation life, its “gallant cavaliers and delicate ladies” was not all it was cracked up to be, especially for the majority of Southerners. The war was fought by Southerners who wanted desperately to preserve the freedom to own slaves, even though most had no realistic chance of ever possessing any themselves. As always, the poor consistently tend to fight as well as vote against their own self-interest.

But this film doesn’t dwell on the poor, it focuses on the aristocracy, and
the depiction of the base and foundation of that great civilization, slavery, was conveniently, even embarrassingly, whitewashed. My family still had hearsay memories of Negro slavery in Cuba, where it was not outlawed until the 1890s. There was no hypocrisy about it. They made no excuses for it, it was remembered as a cruel and brutal heritage, in fact a major reason the Revolution against Spain was fought. (Although Cuban historians do not claim the war was fought to free the slaves as much as they were freed by their masters to provide recruits to fight against the Spanish Crown.)

I chose instead to approach the movie differently, not as a historical narrative of the 19th century, or even as a distillation of American memories of the war itself, three quarters of a century later. Instead I decided to look at it as a work of art, as a piece of cinematography. GWTW is an epic film, a classic, considered by some the best film ever made. I’m not sure I would agree with that, but it certainly was a very important one, perhaps the first true modern movie.

Citizen Kane followed it two years later, also an artistic triumph, but it was deliberately done as a work of literature, by an individual genius. GWTW made no pretense to being anything but a great entertainment, put together by the corporate machine that was the Hollywood studio system and based on a popular novel the nation was already familiar with. It was a commercial product, pure and simple, but it was a very finely crafted one. It was more like “The Godfather” than “Apocalypse Now”.

At first the film strikes one as quaint and contrived, the opening scenes at Tara and Twelve Oaks, the magnificent costumes and furnishings, the elaborate make-up and dialog, come across as stilted and artificial. But that’s one way to establish, if not the truth of the era, what the film was trying to communicate as the truth. And to be fair, we really don’t know how people moved and spoke in those days, how they carried themselves and intoned their voices. All we have is written selections of formal speech, not the trivial domestic conversations and interactions of petty aristocrats. If these people did not exactly act like rich Georgians in 1860, it is probably as realistic and valid a reconstruction as we’re likely to see.

The camera work follows the conventions of the time, each major character is introduced with a long frame and a close-up that establishes his or her personality, and the background music is overpowering and formulaic, providing an emotional backdrop and stylized reinforcement to the action on the screen.

But after a while, the jarring differences between the film-making of the last century and today’s are forgotten, or absorbed psychologically, and we get into the interplay and evolution of their characters. Here is where the film shines. These are real people, warts and all, with real histories and growth, and although I’m sure Vivian Lee and Clark Gable and Leslie Howard could have been replaced by competent actors, today, I can’t imagine any of those people being portrayed by anyone else. Gable, in particular, stands out. He was the George Clooney of his day. One understands that if the performances were stylized, we also realize the mannerisms and exposition of that age would also be alien to us. That acting style gets transformed into a badge of authenticity, we are actually looking back into the 19th century, how people thought and spoke, acted and moved. The only other films I’ve seen which do this as convincingly are “Master and Commander” and “Barry Lyndon”. We have no way of knowing how authentic they are, but at least we perceive them as authentic.

As for the art direction and special effects, they are as good as anything you’ll see today. The burning of Atlanta and the Confederate wounded in the rail yard scenes are as moving as anything you’d expect to see in a good modern film.

But as always, it is the story that matters. This movie tells a damned good story, one inhabited by unforgettable characters living and suffering through turbulent times. And that is something that has always been rare, and is still a delight to watch.

No doubt this film will be shown a lot this year because of the anniversary. I highly recommend you watch it. I can only imagine it astonished European audiences when they first saw it, who would have thought the Yanks could pull something like that off? It is an American masterpiece.