An Amazing Movie (for 1939)
I need to start off this review with a disclaimer: THIS MOVIE IS CRAZY LONG. If I wasn't serious about that, I wouldn't have put it in all caps. The only way I managed to watch it in one sitting was because I was in the midst of a transpacific flight. However, I am glad that I sat down to watch the movie in one sitting. As with most movies, I hate to get up and miss parts of it, or pause it and watch the rest later, because I find movies to be emotionally investing. This was definitely the case in this movie, and while I didn't cry, I was gripped by the romance and tragedy throughout.
This movie was big enough to essentially typecast Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara for the modern-day audience, and rightly so. Their performances were quite wonderful; I would love to sit down and watch Gable and Humphrey Bogart just have the most manly conversation ever. You have to give it up for Hattie McDaniel to be the first African American to be both nominated for and win an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress), and she totally earned it by displaying a very versatile range of emotion concerning the onset of age and the experience of personal distress. Of course, what's not to like about a period piece? The descriptions of the American Civil War in this film may have been extremely romanticized, but the setting for an epic of a movie was simply perfect.
While the lead actors and actresses in this film shone brightly, the same cannot be said for the support cast. I was particularly bothered by the performance of Butterfly McQueen who, aside from overacting, was simply too bombastic in her emotional outbursts. The rest of the cast was fairly forgettable. The plot and character development were both good, but the story tends to write itself for most of the movie. There is little in the way of originality, but perhaps I would be singing a different tune if I was writing this review three-quarters of a century ago.
It's a classic and I chose to watch it because of the fact that it's classic. I was not let down, and if you need to find a way to kill four hours of your time, this wouldn't be a bad way to do it.
Written September 3, 2013
This movie was big enough to essentially typecast Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara for the modern-day audience, and rightly so. Their performances were quite wonderful; I would love to sit down and watch Gable and Humphrey Bogart just have the most manly conversation ever. You have to give it up for Hattie McDaniel to be the first African American to be both nominated for and win an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress), and she totally earned it by displaying a very versatile range of emotion concerning the onset of age and the experience of personal distress. Of course, what's not to like about a period piece? The descriptions of the American Civil War in this film may have been extremely romanticized, but the setting for an epic of a movie was simply perfect.
While the lead actors and actresses in this film shone brightly, the same cannot be said for the support cast. I was particularly bothered by the performance of Butterfly McQueen who, aside from overacting, was simply too bombastic in her emotional outbursts. The rest of the cast was fairly forgettable. The plot and character development were both good, but the story tends to write itself for most of the movie. There is little in the way of originality, but perhaps I would be singing a different tune if I was writing this review three-quarters of a century ago.
It's a classic and I chose to watch it because of the fact that it's classic. I was not let down, and if you need to find a way to kill four hours of your time, this wouldn't be a bad way to do it.
Written September 3, 2013