I loved it!

It's just so full and lush and totally unconventional. It's not the long, boring, sappy romance you expect; it's destructive and dark and, like, thirty years ahead of its time. The sexual politics of the thing are terribly mature; Scarlett is, essentially, a gold-digger. And she gets properly vilified for it. Same with Rhett the chauvinist.

This is what an epic should be. Not shit like Ben-Hur.

I liked the french one better.

This does stand the test of time very well, I think its the fact its so decedent and over the top that does it. Its like Hedonismbot from Futurama in film form.

You know, even if we remove all the problematic aspects of the film, Gone With The Wind is still a terrible film. Scarlett O Hara is a shit person and this movie thinks that spending three and a half hours (!!!) with her is a good idea. And no, surrounding her with even more shit people doesn't help. It was a brutal slog to get through. Yes, I could and should have turned it off at any point, but wanted to stay with it for the purpose of history.

I also recognize how important this film was. Making it in color with some incredible looking shots is arguably one of the biggest achievements in all of movies. However, then we come back to the problem of glorifying and romantizing the Confederacy and the very postive portrayal of slavery. Fuck off with all that. It cancels out the technical and historical achievements. Therefore, based on its own merits as a story, I give Gone With The Wind an F. One of the biggest wastes of time in my life, and that's saying alot!

It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but how does it show slavery in a positive light?

I don’t see it as romanticizing the confederacy, but as telling the perspective of southern women left home during the Civil war. Is it pro confederacy to show people in the south at that time as anything but cartoonishly evil?

The most glaring example is the scene where a group of slaves are marching and singing towards the end of the war, and I was thinking 'these guys are happy cause they're about to be free' but instead, when Scarlet asks what they are up to they say 'We'll stop them Yankees for ya!" The slaves are always happy, always loyal, always obedient even after they are no longer required to be. It makes it seem like they were part of the family. Then Scarlet gets attacked while travelling through the newly freed negro town, cause all the brave and glorious white men to have a 'political meeting' (aka a Klan gathering) to stop them. Also, the movie makes a point of showing all the Union soldiers as 'cartoonishly evil.'



Again though, even if you take all of this out the movie is still a horrible piece of trash. If it was two hours I could maybe forgive certain things, but nearly four hours straight of this shit was torture. It doesn't top The Last Airbender as my least favorite film of all time, but it is definitely hanging out with Ung and Soooka down there in movie hell.

I never particularly liked the film but I just remember thinking it was boring and too long.

Everything you said there is also accurate.

I read the book in high school, it was much better than the film IMO. Doesn’t translate well.