Am I the only one who did not like Gone with the Wind?

[Cass]

I watched it for the first time this weekend but only got through about an hour before I shut it off. I kept thinking what is so great about this movie? I feel mildly embarrassed about not liking it since it is such a classic that people rave about. Anyone else feel like this about GWTW, or am I missing something?

[hfojvt]

1. I may be the only one who has never seen it

and frankly, I don't give a tanj.

[Cass]

2. LOL!

From my perspective...you're not missing much.

:hide:

[orleans]

21. sorry--you're not alone. i have never sat through it--have seen clips

and knew it just wasn't my thing.

[RushIsRot]

3. I have seen the movie twice. I found it mildly intersting the first viewing.

It was boring as could be the second time through. Never again.

[Cass]

6. Yeah, I won't attempt this one again either.

That one hour was enough for me.

[qnr]

4. I've never watched it n/t

[DarkTirade]

5. Never seen it.

:shrug:

[Generic Brad]

7. Frankly, my dear Cass

I don't give a damn about that film either.

[Cass]

10. LOL! I think its unanimous!

[kwassa]

8. GWTW is a terrible movie

probably the most overrated in cinematic history.

It takes incredible fortitude to make it to the end of the film. Rhett Butler said "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" long after it deserved to die.

Aside from the obvious wildly racist aspects of this movie .....

Scarlett O'Hara is a vain, self-involved, useless twit that is only important because of her father's money. The men who chase her are equally idiotic, though in truth they probably want to marry her for her father's fortune.

She manages to pass obliviously through the Civil War without learning a thing about the war, life, death, herself, and she remains as vain and self-involved and stupid at the end as she was at the beginning.

Why are we watching her? The real story is everywhere else.

[Cass]

9. Great review, kwassa

I was really surprised at how bad this film was - after all the hype I was expecting so much more.

[Forkboy]

11. No, except for the amputation scene.

Color me whacked, but I liked that part. :evilgrin:

[Cass]

12. I bailed out before that part.

:scared:

[Forkboy]

23. Every movie has at least ONE good part.

The witch melting in The Wizard Of Oz, Bogart showing how lying can be noble in Casablanca...and the dude getting his leg sawed off in Gone With The Wind. :D

[mitchum]

13. My favorite literary critic is the cabdriver who ran over Margaret Mitchell

wretched book
wretched movie

[Cass]

18. LOL

:rofl:

[RoyGBiv]

14. Nope ...

I loathe that movie.

The book is decent, but the movie is atrocious except from a technical, for the time, perspective.

[alphafemale]

15. It might be moderately interesting if cut down to a half hour or so.

It could possibly even be mildly amusing for its over-wrought melodrama.

But doesn't that thing clock in at over four hours?

ugh

[Cass]

19. Yep, its a marathon.

No way could I handle listening to Scarlett carry on for 4 hours. I lasted 1 hour.

[pitohui]

16. yeah i don't get the big deal either

family members like it so i've seen it a couple times but i'm just not into all that scheming girly shit, i guess that's the only way strong-minded women could survive back then and that's what women get out of it, but for me, i'm a little impatient with it


as others say, scarlett is just horrible, vain and scheming, and to me just a horrible person, and apparently it was a radical thing to have a strong woman not be all sweetness and violets and that's why it means so much to a lot of women, esp. older southern women

but i just think we have other, stronger female heroines now -- yes, it's radical that a woman could be a monster of ego and "it's all about me" but she's really no more likeable than any male monster of ego if you get my drift

[Cass]

22. Scarlett was very unlikeable.

Shallow, scheming, annoying and self-centered. Ugh, just awful.

It was probably a great cinematic achievement for the time but it was hard to watch.

[mitchum]

33. Yes, she was a full blown sociopath

[KitchenWitch]

17. I think it is like an hour and a half too long.

[Cass]

26. Yeah, 4 hours is pretty intense.

It has to be a really good movie to make it worth a 4 hour investment. This wasn't it.

[Hissyspit]

20. The best part of the movie: Val Lewton's crane shot of the wounded stretching for miles.

If you turned it off before then, you missed the most important part.

"The crane shot where Scarlett searches for Dr. Meade, making her way among suffering and dying Confederate soldiers was Val Lewton's idea. He had previously been Selznick's assistant editor and went on to produce a string of B movies though the 1940s."

Those B movies are now considered classics of pessimistic and dark themes.

The rest of Gone With The Wind? Eh.

The most popular movie in America for the 20-so years before GWTW? The racist Civil War epic "Birth of a Nation," a technical leap ahead in cinematic form, but a piece of shit as far as theme and content. Ridiculous history and hateful racism. And it was the first film screened in the White House. Woodrow Wilson loved it.

[Cass]

24. I shut it off before that scene, unfortunately.

I was hoping for a good story describing that era and its people but this wasn't the film for me.

[Hissyspit]

32. You can probably find that one scene on YouTube and just watch it!

Save yourself the trouble of watching all the rest of the melodramatic crap that is GWTW.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

25. I like it so much I bought the 4-DVD "Obsessive Compulsive" edition

...to be honest, I now know more about the cast, crew and making of the movie than I ever wanted to.

:evilgrin:

[Cass]

28. You are a true fan, Amerigo Vespucci!

How many hours in this DVD set?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

31. Almost 6 (238 minutes total)...

...and I like it for two reasons:

1). Atmosphere

2). Nostalgia (It was one of the first movies I saw in an honest-to-God, retro, old-style classic "movie theater" shortly after moving to California as a teenager).

:toast:

[Kutjara]

27. It bored my tits off.

Seriously. I had to pick them up off the cinema floor and get them surgically reattached.

Frankly, my dear, I couldn't give a shit about that movie.

And it was twelve thousand hours long.

[Cass]

29. Oh God, watching this in a cinema must have been sheer torture.

Yikes.

[Kutjara]

30. It had a goddam intermission!!!

I thought it was all over and was looking forward to some blessed relief in the pub, when my then-girlfriend said, "oh no, it's only halfway through." I thought I was going to claw my own eyes out.

[NMDemDist2]

34. by today's standards it's overblown for sure but it was one of the first movies

to really use the color cinematography to the extent it did

I personally love the movie, but even being a big fan it really drags in places....

[MissMillie]

35. yep, that about sums it up

Cold Mountain was such a better story.

[NoGOPZone]

36. Well acted but too long

And the finish doesn't justify the wait.

[GCP]

37. The sound-track is horrendous and relentless

I could just about stomach the movie if it wasn't for the horrible sound track.

[raccoon]

38. When I first read GWTW, I loved it. I was 13, this was the early '60's,

and for years I'd heard female relatives rave about how wonderful it was. It was almost holy writ.

I loved it then, read it over and over. Even now, my sister and I quote GWTW dialog or narrative to each other at appropriate moments. I made up a chart of the characters and what happened to them.
At that time, I also loved the movie, except that I didn't like it that they left out Scarlett's first two children.

But over the years, my opinion changed considerably. I realized long ago that it was a romanticized and unrealistic depiction of the antebellum South and slavery. Scarlett was a self-centered, mean person and why in the same hill Rhett loved her so much I don’t know. She didn’t learn from her experiences; she went through the war and Reconstruction and hunger and still had that childish crush on Ashley.

I looked up reviews of the book once in BOOK REVIEW DIGEST and they tore it up. I remember one review said the author’s knowledge of human nature seemed to come from fiction rather than RL. I think so too, though I couldn’t exactly explain why.

I tried GWTW on audiobook about two years ago. I couldn’t get through Part 1—it was so verbose and wordy.

Sadly, I believe many Americans’ ideas about the antebellum South and slavery come from this unrealistic portrayal.

[joeybee12]

39. It's the greatest movie EVER!!!

I love it! To appreciate it, watch some other movies from 1939 and then watch GWTW...it changed movie-making forever!

On eof the greatest femal screen performances ever from Vivian Leigh.

[Silver Swan]

40. Not like GWTW? Blasphemy!

The novel and the movie were among my mother's favorites.

When I was growing up (in the 1940-1950 era) GWTW was re-released only about once every seven years and my mother would look forward to seeing it again. I was only about eight or nine the first time I remember it being in theaters, and my mother deemed me too young to see it, but she took my older sisters. My older sister even bought the sound track on EP 45's!

By the next time it was released, I was in high school. I hadn't read the book yet, but my younger sister had. We saw it in a local theater. When the theme music came on, my sister started crying, because the book had been so sad. I remember being impressed with the makeup. Vivien Leigh looked fresh and pretty, not made up like most 1930's era actresses!

Anyway, I have since read the book many times and I have seen the movie many times.

In fact we bought a Sony Betamax back in 1976. Our purchase was made in time to record GWTW the first time it aired on TV. It took four tapes to record it. My daughter, who was born in 1976, loved to watch the video when she was little because she liked all the pretty dresses.

I always thought GWTW had something for everybody, but I now realize that in the 21st century it doesn't.

[Cass]

46. You make me realize I should read the book.

I haven't done that and its unfair of me to judge the story without at least giving the book a shot.

[leftofthedial]

41. frankly, I don't give a damn

[Thirtieschild]

42. I saw it for the first time in 1943, when I was 8

Saw it every release thereafter, probably every five years or so. Back then the audience always let out a nervous laugh when Rhett said "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Nervous laughter because he said damn. Times have changed.

[LynneSin]

43. Scarlett O'Hara - the worlds most annoying person

I saw GWTW the first time in a local theater that was playing it one afternoon. There was a fade to black after her "God as My Witness" whine so I got up, put on my coat and got ready to leave.

A person grabbed me and said the movie wasn't overwith.

As God as my witness, I wish I had ignored that person

[Cass]

45. LOL!

:rofl:

[bigwillq]

44. I didn't care much for it either (nt)

[Lex]

47. Book was better --

way, way better. As per usual.

[Cass]

49. I'm going to try reading the book, haven't done that.

Maybe I will have a better opinion of the story afterwards.

[Fox Mulder]

48. No. I hated it too.

Horrible movie. :puke:

[jmowreader]

50. Down here, that film is considered almost a documentary

Gone With The Wind is what truly separates Northerners from Southerners.

From what I've been told, in the South a viewing of GWTW (in pre-Home Video days, when you actually had to make an effort to watch a movie) was a black-tie event. By damn, you wore your ball gown to the theatre or they didn't let you in.

Northerners can't understand that shitty movie. Then again, when Lewis and Clark marched to the sea they didn't leave a trail of death and destruction behind them...