Battles/Moments: Burning of Atlanta, Reconstruction.

One of the most celebrated, if controversial movies ever made, few argue that Gone With the Wind is one of the best stories ever to grace the silver screen. The tormented life of Scarlett O'Hara, ranging from Southern Belle to stern businesswoman once the world turns upside down via the War of Northern Aggression, provides the audience with a tale of overcoming obstacles by any means necessary.

F.Scott Fitzgerald’s words scroll up from the opening, telling you all you need to know how this would go:

There was a land of cotton fields and cavaliers in the Old South...
Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow…
Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave..
Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered.
A Civilization gone with the wind...

The story of Scarlett O'Hara is as Southern a staple as grits, sweet potatoes, high school football on Friday nights, pickup trucks, Bluegrass, coon dogs on the front porch, cotton fields, magnolia trees, "Hush your mouth," and "Bless your heart." It's an institution for Southerners, who as a group might well be treated as an ethnicity all our own.

Of course, Atlanta's not even really to be considered Southern anymore, with too many Northern and Western transplants, not to mention a large international community. All of which is fine, and certainly adds to the culture and a diverse base, but sometimes you just enjoy sitting on the porch of a small Southern town watching the cows across the street and wondering how long it is until the PC crowd demands that the monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest be taken down. (This would be my grandparents' home in Chapel Hill, Tenn.)

With that nostalgia out of the way, you don’t have to be Southern to appreciate the scale of the movie, and love it. Obviously with all the dough the movie raked in, it was a nationwide obsession. A movie ingrained on the national conscience, part of American lore, and the country's most popular film by a mile (adjusting for inflation, GWTW would have made more than $2 billion at the U.S. box office by today's standards), Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel became the Great American Epic.

When Margaret Mitchell wrote her masterpiece, it was a cultural phenomenon almost overnight. The casting calls for the movie alone would have filled 100 Entertainment Weekly magazines with speculation, and people debated who should play Scarlett and Rhett incessantly. When the movie premiered, audiences lined up for hours to see the film that ultimately won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

GWTW is a film of two halves, dealing with Scarlett before and during the War ("War, war, war! This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring."), and Scarlett during Reconstruction ("As God is my witness they're not going to lick me! I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again! No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill! As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"). Gone With the Wind is a story of love and passion, a story of war, a story of loyalty, of ethics, and ultimately, of survival.

Coupled with the story, the visual storytelling elevates the movie even further, with sweeping vistas of Tara and the southern landscape, the terror when Atlanta burns, and the reconstruction of Scarlett's world. There are few more dramatic scenes in cinematic history than Scarlett as an overwrought nurse among thousands of injured Confederates in Atlanta's desolate streets. Gone With the Wind is a movie that demands to be seen on the big screen. Underneath it all is the powerfully memorable music by Max Steiner, that expresses the dramatic mix of dream and reality, of love and loss, of a fear-inspiring new reality. All you need to get that lift is to hear the optimistic score and think, "Yes, tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow is another day."

Even with the pressure from the moviegoing public, it's easy to see that the filmmakers made all the right decisions in regards to the cast, starting with Katie Scarlett. I do declare, Britain’s own Vivian Leigh was the perfect choice for our Southern Belle heroine. Sure, Scarlett’s a fickle and selfish woman, pouty and spoiled, and not particularly worth loving. She falls for a weak man who married her only friend, and doesn't care that she hurts the only man (Rhett) who ever truly loved her.

Scarlett is about as unsympathetic character as can be. Women surely don't want to be like her, and men nowadays wouldn't want to marry her (Maybe a fling, sure, but long-term? Never), yet we watch the screen, riveted by her. Do we watch to see what trouble she cooks up next? See how her feisty behavior draws men, then compels her to discard them? Look to the wartime and postwar hardships to see how that tough character enables her to survive and thrive? Do we suddenly embrace her at the end of a real romantic tragedy, with Scarlett only realizing her love for Rhett at the very end, when he was halfway out the door? Or do we still hold it against her that she loved Ashley for so long, when he could never share that love, and probably didn't deserve such affection in the first place?

Scarlett's a tragic figure, yet deserves what she gets. But fiddle-dee-dee, as Melanie says, she’s “high spirited and vivacious,” and doesn’t care so much for custom as much as her happiness and well-being. She endures so much, from the simplicity before war, leading on boys ("Don't you men think of anything important” besides war?), the hell of war, Reconstruction, marriage(s) and motherhood, trying to make her way in proper society, dealing with the death of a daughter, and when she kills that Yankee home invader, you’re as glad as Melanie.

Supporting Leigh, the rest of the large cast keeps the film genuine for the ages. I can't imagine any other actor playing Rhett Butler. I've heard that Errol Flynn was originally set to play the part, and he's a fine actor, but no way is he Rhett; he’s a rogue, but a hero, he’s a lover, but a fighter, he’s a romantic, but abrasive. Rhett's a man's man ("No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you! You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.") He does have one fault, and that is loving Scarlett, a woman who would never return his affections properly.

Olivia de Havilland should be proud to be remembered for being sweet and naďve Melanie Hamilton all her life - there's not a more sympathetic character in the history of cinema. Random trivia: The scene where Scarlett digs up a turnip then retches and gives her "As God is my witness" line, the vomiting sounds were actually made by de Havilland since Leigh could not produce a convincing enough retch. So you see, de Havilland is the most versatile actor of the crew as well.

Here's a question: Why would any woman want Ashley Wilkes? What a wuss! Captain Rhett Butler is THE man, the coolest cat in all of cinematic history! Come on, Scarlett, sheesh. That's nothing against Leslie Howard, but he's too much southern gentleman, not enough firebrand. Only when Ashley admitted his love did Scarlett realize he was too weak for her.

Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to be nominated for, and to win, an Academy Award, for her role as loyal slave-turned-maid Mammy. McDaniel would have been prevented from attending the film's Atlanta premiere because of Georgia's racial segregation laws, so as not to put David O. Selznick in the awkward position of having to fight for her right to attend, she wrote to him, saying that she would be "unavailable." A classy lady, for sure.

Because of instances as this, the movie gets a lot of grief over its dealing with race relations. It’s a fair argument, since today’s society is much more sensitive to racial sensitivities, mostly for the better, sometimes for the worse at the extremes. Of course, at the time, shocked audiences generally felt disgust at the end when Rhett gives his "I don't give a damn line," so we can see that priorities were a little different in 1939.

Yes, in most every way the movie takes a pro-Southern stance and lack of discussion on how slaves were treated. The story is told in a Southern point-of-view, and while the South deserved to be defeated soundly for secession and freeing the slaves, not all slaves were beaten into submission and whipped to no avail after working 20 hours a day bent over a field or carrying horses. Many slaves were on fair relations with the family, and like Sam would protect Scarlett in a crisis. I wonder if those on the fringe are happier when Scarlett slaps Prissy for knowing nothing about birthin’ babies, since it’s more “genuine.”

For all that is good about Southern culture -- honor, courage, hospitality, chivalry -- one cannot dismiss that much of it grew out of an unequal society, where slavery was legal for two centuries and the white power structure disenfranchised blacks until forty years ago. So while I regret the passing of a proud society, I'm not saying that every tradition is one worth keeping; slavery is certainly repugnant and worth the Confederacy being beaten on the battlefield. Still, that won't prevent me from damning Sherman for sweeping into Georgia, bringing hellfire and brimstone, leaving the state to face the hell of famine and defeat. Georgia still hates Sherman.

Does Gone With the Wind's treatment of slavery make it less a candidate to be the Great American Epic? Maybe by the same people who discount the movie entirely for thinking the South could have any heroes on the wrong side of the War. I doubt they would say the same about All Quiet On the Western Front. I'm not saying you have to be a Confederate-battle flag-waver to love the movie, just a recognition that brother died fighting brother, American blood was shed on the battlefields and the South was ripped apart, physically and mentally, slow to recover for decades to come.

So is it racist? I’ll think about that tomorrow.

Is it a great movie deserving of such status on the American Film Institute's list of best films? Fiddle-dee-dee! There's no need to even ask.

The verdict: -- The Great American Epic.