Ultimate Classic Not So Classy

How do you prepare yourself to watch a movie that many consider to be the greatest of all time? Don't read the book that the movie was adapted from, for starters. And definitely don't raise your expectations so high that you anticipate a Steven Spielberg movie to look something like a cross between Dhoom 2 and Fanaa in your forever-enlightened future. Sadly, I didn't follow any of these two sacrosanct commandments before watching the supposed ultimate classic Gone With The Wind. This may sound shocking to many, but I didn't really think the movie was any great shakes. And considering the fact that Victor Fleming, the director, was also the man behind The Wizard of Oz, my unhappiness with Gone With The Wind puts my plans of watching all the movies of 'Hollywood's Golden Age' in serious jeopardy.

The real trouble with the movie, I thought, was the fact that the book written by Margaret Mitchell was simply magnificent. Scarlett O Hara was, and will remain, the most consistent, charming, enigmatic and electrifying character ever created. It would have been humanly impossible to portray all the facets of the character on screen convincingly enough, which is precisely why I thought Vivian Leigh doesn't do justice to Scarlett, and this, may I add, would have been the fate of any other actress who would've attempted the role. Very often, the screen Scarlett comes off as nothing more than a silly little bimbette, and while Scarlett was supposed to be a 'spoilt child', she was always a very smart spoilt child. Leigh certainly looks as bewitchingly beautiful as anyone could have imagined Scarlett to be, but towards the end of the movie, with every 'Ohhhh Aaashleeeyyy' in that exasperatingly overstrained tone of hers I was increasingly wishing for 'Aaashleeeyyy' to turn around and give her a resounding thwack on the head. There are moments when Leigh manages to do brilliantly, like the scene when she learns of her father's senility or the one with Ashley's birthday party, but those are quite evenly balanced by her unsatisfactory acting in the 'God is my witness' outburst or the botched up climax.

There are faults in the direction too; Scarlett's Herculean struggles after returning from Atlanta just aren't depicted adequately enough, nor is the undefinable change that comes in her after her episode with Ashley at Tara that steels her enough to make a fortune out of enslaving convicts. I could accept the scriptwriter leaving out Scarlett's first two children from the movie - they were hardly important to the story; but giving Will Benteen, a significant part of Scarlett's evolvement a complete miss was very nearly a critical mistake. Alright, I know the movie is already nearly four hours long, but that's the problem with reading the book first: you just cannot forgive certain deficiencies in the movie, no matter how reasonable they may be. The climax, save for the legendary 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn' line by Clark Gable is highly disappointing. And speaking of Clark Gable, I can't really believe that he didn't win an Oscar for his performance. I simply cannot imagine anyone other than Gable in the role - he is, there's no other way to say it, stunningly perfect. So is Olivia de Havilland as the unbelievably sweet Melanie. In fact, the two people that did win Oscars for acting from the movie, Vivian Leigh and Hattie McDaniel (as the irrepressible Mammy) aren't really the best performers in the movie. Leslie Howard as the whimsical intellectual Ashley is really good too, but failed to get even a nomination. Ah well, I suppose you can't really argue enough about the strange ways of Oscar juries.

A movie adapted from a book will always be a little iffy; there'll always be legions who completely despise the movie even if it is a cinematic masterpiece. While I certainly don't despise the movie version of Gone With The Wind, I do believe it could've been better. And since I haven't watched any of the Godfather movies yet, my opinion that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is the only instance where the movie adaptation turned out better than the book (for the record, I found J R R Tolkien's epic tremendously boring) remains unchanged. So I wouldn't mind Hollwyood doing a remake of Gone With The Wind, with perhaps Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman in the lead (though I suppose it would be really difficult to show Winslet as a 16-year-old village belle). OK, I know what I just said may seem outrageously scandalous to most people (since, for the uninformed, most people worship Gone With The Wind as the greatest thing that ever happened to a trashy thing like Hollywood), so I think I'll wind things up here. And hope against hope that Godfather, which I'm going to watch tomorrow, doesn't turn out as disappointing as Gone With The Wind. Alright alright, stop thinking about the rotten tomatoes now. There's no way they can come through a computer screen.