88. Gone With The Wind (1939)

I always get intimidated by movies that are 3 hours or more. It just always seems to me a movie can get done in like 2 hours what it can do in 3 hours. Plus I have an impatient streak, and constantly check how much time is left in any movie I watch.

So that being said I was procrastinating about watching this movie, because it's almost 4 hours long. Honestly who makes 4 hour movies? It just seems like a bad idea.

So at 3 AM last night I determined that I would watch this movie. And I really dug it. The pace is good and the characters are great and well realized, and the story gets going right away.

I like Scarlet's character alot. Like she was so despicable and petulant that you really shouldn't like her, but somehow I never ended up hating her. I think it's because Vivian Leigh does such a good job with her, and the story makes it clear what she is doing and why she does it. I really liked the scene early in the movie when Scarlet is flirting with all this mutton-chopped douchebags just because she wants to make Ashley jealous. Man she's such a debutante. But she's always awesome cause she shoots a guy in the face.

I also thought Clark Gable was awesome. It's weird with him in that for some reason I don't want to like him, maybe it's the moustache, or just some vibe of insincerity I get when I look at him, or maybe it's just the realization that Dave Foley does Clark Gable as well as Clark Gable does. But fuck he's good. He was such a pimp in this movie, and I loved how condescending he was to Scarlet. There was so much comedy in that, and that whole scene where he brings Ashley back with a bullet wound under the guise of being drunk was so genius. Rhett is just an awesomely realized character.

Mammy too was amazing. Calling everyone 'po white trash' and shit. Paul Mooney in "Mooney on Movies" explains her awesomeness better than I ever could:

Mooney claims after the women say Gone with the Wind is a classic that the best scene in the movie is when Mammy tells the white people to "get off my po'ch, white trash." He then informs the women that in real life Hattie McDaniel was not allowed to attend the opening and "she's dead but everybody comes back to get their money. She came back as Oprah Winfrey to get her money."

Another thing that I liked was the shot of Scarlet going to find Dr. Meade and being surrounded by all the dead bodies as the camera pans out to reveal just how much devastation there is. It's a powerful shot but what I appreciate most is that the Simpsons paid homage to it in the episode where Homer gets a trampoline and all the kids of the neighborhood use it to their peril. Good stuff.