C or D: David O. Selznick's 1939 production of "Gone with the Wind"

it's better than Casablanca

it's bad.

you a mess, honey!

There are some funny lines at the expense of Dixie delusions, like Aunt Pittypat's "Yankees in Georgia! How did they ever get in?"

lol victor fleming, the anti-auteur

and he directed what, 40-60% of it?

should've gone with margaret mitchell's request that they cast groucho as rhett butler

(Cukor, Sam Wood, who else?)

I think Selznick was the auteur on this.

John Waters wanted to remake w/ Brigitte Nielsen and Ice-T.

Vivian Leigh deserved the Oscar, and Leslie Howard deserved a slap across the face with a wet barracuda.

I don't think it's anywhere near as good as "Casablanca"! it's a long, long time since I watched it (probably the '80's), my main memories are that the technicolor was very nice to look at, Vivien Leigh was pretty great, it seemed very, very long and draggy. I don't think I actually watched it all the way through? I think I got bored.

Dud, I guess I'd have to say.

If you think it's draggy, open the book.

Dinah Shore was a better Melanie than Olivia deH in the Carol Burnett version.

It knocked "Gold Diggers of Broadway" off the top of then "highest-grossing movie ever" pile IIRC, which it had held since 1929. That "GDoBW" (which sounds like it was a total blast) only exists in fragmentary form, while you can buy a lavish restored DVD of "GwtW" seems like some kind of cosmic injustice to me.

I hate Leslie Howard. I'm not feeling the hate on this thread.

I liked him in The Scarlet Pimpernel well enough.

Crane also had roles in the 1949 Cisco Kid movie "The Gay Amigo,"

Indeed.

I still haven't seen this film in its entirety and kinda don't want to. However, some years back Mackro had it on TV at his old place near UCI, local channel movie night or something, and took down the sound and replaced it with a Neil Hamburger CD. The sequence where Rhett Butler is telling off a room full of Southern gentlemen with Neil Hamburger's style of audience abuse coming out of his mouth was one of those unexpected gifts.

Leslie Howard was partly responsible for the film career of Humphrey Bogart (insisting he repeat his stage perf in The Petrified Forest), who named a child after him. Also, Ashley Wilkes is kind of an unplayable part.

Howard's unbearable in that film too (and Of Human Bondage). Maybe he mixed great martinis in private life.

http://www.leninimports.com/leslie_howard_gallery_main.jpg

"Why must Alfred drive me to darkened despair?"

no way is this in the same league as casablanca. the two leads are pretty good, though.

Entertaining. Moreso than Casablanca.

if I've gone halfway through life and still haven't seen this am I going to enjoy it y/n

xp: oh, fiddledeedee.

J0hn, yes if you enjoy 2 or more: war spectacle, ruthless survivors in big pretty dresses, slaves talking funny, marital rape as the mutually satisfying resolution to an argument.

GWTW seems like the prototype for a certain kind of throw-money-at-everything-but-the-script Hollywood blockbuster. Casablanca is a better film in every way -- tighter, funnier, more suspenseful, more thoughtful in its treatment of personal morality in wartime.

There are some spectacular set pieces in GWTW, and Vivian Leigh looks great, but the storyline is boring when not repulsive. The acting is pretty weak, except for Hattie McDaniel, who somehow wrings a few minutes of humanity out of a dreadfully written part.

I saw a few minutes of the Bette Davis movie "Jezebel" on TCM recently and thought it kicked the antebellum ass of GWTW.

Jezebel is the much better pictuer, and it's better than Casablanca too (as were a couple of those Wyler-Davis collabs)

I didn't know 'blanca-bashing was trendy!

More like Cazzzzzzzzzablanca!

not flamboyant enough for some folx I guess...

So much worse than Casablanca. The first half is kind of alright.

Yeah, GWTW admittedly has third-act problems.

gone with the wind > casablanca is crazy talk.

the only moment of gwtw that I recall displaying any cinematic worth was the crane pan over the wounded solidiers.

I should watch again tho, it's been 15 year since I last saw it.

I saw casablanca in high school and didn't get it. maybe you should try seeing it again after you graduate eric?

it's been 15 year since I last saw it

not sure why I'm posting like cotton mather

or Prissy!

not sure why I'm posting like cotton mather

You are embracing your proud Puritan heritage.

maybe you should try seeing it again after you graduate eric?

lol zing

Let's get back to Leslie Howard.

old movies more or less suck

the acting is so wooden and bad

you were better served on the society is in the gutter thread

srsly who watches these things? and why?

we have watched everything else and are working our way backwards

hav u seen tropic thunder tho

yes

it is also much better than gone with teh wind

do u think morbs has seen tropic thunder and is he a downey jr fan?

Acting in a lot of modern films is wooden and bad, just in a way that modern people are acclimatised to and more willing to accept.

hold on let me consult morbs.xls

Acting in a lot of modern films is "natural" and bad, thx Actors Studio.

the counter argument is that movies were really new and no one knew how to make them worth shit - creative types labored under a highly restrictive studio system - and actors were all trained for stage and/or silent films

oy vey

let's talk more about the free, enlightened, and supportive environment of today's hollywood. I'm glad that restrictive studio system was done away with.

I think modern audiences have a hard time relating to Casablanca and GWTW as they're about adults.

I read GWTW when I was in . . . 10th? 1th? grade, and it was fine. Saw the movie shortly thereafter and don't see any need to ever see it again. Fuck a Confederacy.

Casablanca I first saw in a film appreciation class in college. I own the DVD and can watch it pretty much anytime. Never gets old.

"1th" = "11th"

Casablanca I have seen all the way through, twice, and I love it. There are just a lot of little things about GWTW that add up to "no thanks."

mostly old movie buffs are pining for a nonexistent time gone by with the wind - these movies are simple and obvious - easy to understand

When did this thread turn to shit? Is ice craem Leslie Howard?

he could be... Nude Spock?

Some Marxist-blogger thoughts on racism in the film and novel:

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/gone-with-the-wind/

he does have a point though, let's get back to the hegelian complexity that is tropic thunder

shouldnt this thread be in ilf lol

Acting in a lot of modern films is "natural" and bad, thx Actors Studio.

so you saw paranoid park?

Before the Devil Knows Albert Finney Asphyxiated P.S. Hoffman is what I was thinking of, first.

shouldnt this thread be in ilf lol

would you stop posting in it then?

i will if you all agree to stay in ilf

and take all the alexs w/u

what do you mean by "you people"?

he means, he's the foreman at Tara.

Dud because Olivia de Havilland just *won't die* and is ruining the success of my ILX Dead Pool '08, damnit!

ODH's only good film was The Heiress.

truth juice all over this thread thanks to ice cream

it must've run out of his ear.

just what this thread needed, truth juice

It's antioxidant.

It tastes like ham croquettes.

tmi

what do you mean by "you people"?

What do you mean by "you people"?

(/Tropic Thunder)

For Alfred:

http://artless.lilting.org/caps_gwtw/images/gwtw0175.jpg

*rolls eyes at this thread*

but max, we were waiting for an "I'd hit it" post re Belle Watling!

Remember when CBS would make a big deal out of running Gone With the Wind and Wizard of Oz each year? Before videotape, it was the only way most viewers could see these movies.

the Burnett show's spoof of GWTW was tied to its TV debut -- in 1976.

I can't see it, Morbs. If it's a croquette, you're 10 minutes too late.

these spoiled punks today, I remember when culture meant watching a jumpy 8mm print of nosferatu projected on a torn bedsheet

xxp

thread now indistinguishable from society is in the gutter

is this the most hyped film ever, pre and post release?
-- Frogman Henry, Tuesday, August 26, 2008 1:23 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

"Titanic" has it beat, I imagine.
-- Pashmina, Tuesday, August 26, 2008 1:24 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Naw, Titanic only had, at best, about nine months' worth of pre-release buzz-engineering. GWTW was out there years (years!) before it was released.

Star Wars prequels or Lord of the Rings, then.

it'd be hard to compete with the hype around the orig release of GWTW, but it was 193fkn9 and culture was a lot less dense then

i mean dense and in dense, not dense as in stupid.

the book was a massive massive hit

Great, now I'm wondering what GWTW viral marketing would have been like.

franklymydear.org

ts: gone with the wind vs birth of a nation vs song of the south

It knocked "Gold Diggers of Broadway" off the top of then "highest-grossing movie ever" pile IIRC, which it had held since 1929.

This is more often said of The Singing Fool, Al Jolson's 1928 part-talkie follow-up to The Jazz Singer. And it seems as if it beat out Gold Diggers of Broadway just slightly. But according to MGM records, Ben-Hur and The Big Parade (both 1925) outgrossed them both.

That "GDoBW" (which sounds like it was a total blast) only exists in fragmentary form, while you can buy a lavish restored DVD of "GwtW" seems like some kind of cosmic injustice to me.

You can see some of those fragments on the three-disc DVD box of The Jazz Singer released last year which is quite possibly the best DVD set I've ever encountered. Pretty lavish too.

KJB necessitates revival of ILF

I actually watched "Ben Hur" the other night, by coincidence.

I'd held off getting the "Jazz Singer" set, because they screwed up the Gold Diggers..." excerpts, and included a reel from something like "Show of Shows" instead of the "Tiptoe through the Tulips" section (also held off b/c I think "The Jazz Singer" is a bit of a bloater, and Al Jolson gets on my nerves something rotten). I'll eventually pick it up for the disc with all the vitaphone sound shorts on it. The GDoBW remnants are also going to be on the "Gold Diggers of 1937" disc in the forthcoming second Busby Berkely set apparently.

I'd read in a couple of places that GDoBW was the biggest drawing film of its day, that people would go and see it multiple times etc. I have the horrible feeling that one of the places I read that was Wikipedia, so, er.... In any case, given that it was a massive hit, and and that it was the first in a popular series, it just amazes me that it's mainly lost. Reading the story of how the various surviving bits washed up is pretty far out too, like last year or the year before last someone bought a vintage toy projector off ebay and one of the strips of film included with it was about a minute's worth from one of the earlier reels. Eh, maybe some more of it will be found over the next few years. It would be great.

OMG! I was wondering why I didn't hear "Tiptoe through the Tulips" in, well, the "Tiptoe through the Tulips" section. Still, amaaaaazing box set if only for the Vitaphone shorts. Spat into the wind here:

If you dig American vaudeville, get thee to the 3-DVD Deluxe Edition of THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)!

Morbs, you're sweet. I'll start posting on ILF.

I watched this recently on AMC. I haven't watched it since college, where it was campy entertainment for us.

Scarlett O'Hara's curtain couture wasn't THAT different or less ridiculous from Carol Burnett's send-up. I never noticed before how ridiculous Scarlett is. The South is portrayed as some exotic place.

Worth watching for the sets. Surely since this was after the depression, the excess would have invited scorn? Hard to know.

My mother was a teenager when this came out and she thought Clark Gable was a dreamboat. When GWTW was rereleased to theaters in the mid-60s she took all of her four children to the Music Box theater downtown (something unprecedented) so we could soak in the glory, just as she had when young. She talked it up a lot before we went.

As a 10 year old (approx.) I thought the first half was fairly snappy but the second half after the intermission was pretty damned boring. Clark's big line of "frankly, my dear..." just wasn't worth all the tedium that swathed it. I expect the movie was true to the book, but I never bothered to read the book.

Scorn from whom? Surely the masses enjoyed their escape into lavish mansions being burned and looted.

I saw some of it on AMC too, like when Scarlett shoots the rape-intent Yank in the face. I suppose there was a 75th anniv screening in Atlanta, as the premiere was in early December.

de Havilland interview in Garden & Gun:

http://gardenandgun.com/article/interview-olivia-de-havilland

I remember seeing this as a little girl and could not figure out Clark Gable's appeal. I remember talking about it with my mom - "women liked THAT?? That slick hair and stuff?" Burt Reynolds was the hottie in those days - that I understood.