Gone with the Wind
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Now, I don't agree with the people who say that it should be banned, or not shown, but, my God: it's so very, very long and so very, very racist. Nice cinematography though, you know.
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It's set in the 19th century in the Deep South, made in the 1930s, and you're surprised it's racist? It's a Hollywood epic; the style of film has a long running time because there is a grander scope.
It came out a year before The Great Dictator, so I don't think that is a valid defence.
Chaplin was thrown out of America for his troubles.
Such a bizarre thing to say.
Explain yourself sir.
The hero of the film, Rhett Butler, clearly carries anti-hero Scarlett O'Hara off to bed while she protests. For modern audiences spoon fed one dimensional characters in the likes of Jurassic World, I'd imagine this might be hard to process.
It's open to interpretation. Some say it's a clear case of martial rape, and some say it isn't.
Regardless, I don't understand why one has to view one more problematic than the other when one can view both equally problematic.
It would be by reading the book you would be able to see how the slavery/racist element was dealt with. As was posted else where, it's a coming of age story mainly.
From what I remember of the film the servants in the home were treated like members of the family,but, bearing in mind my earlier comment the woman playing the maid pops up in different films of the era playing a similar role, so perhaps it was written with her in mind. Although I have watched the movie a couple of times,it does nothing for me.
But, tomorrow will still be another day at Tara......
Oh well, roll on the how awful is the existence of 'Song Of The South' thread. ^_^
(Just my opinion.)
As much as it likes to pretend it isn't the U.S. was behind the times then, still is now.
Someone from Australia might not be the best choice to pontificate on other countries historical race relations, no?
True.
I wouldn't say the movie itself is racist but certainly many of the characters are (in the book even the most sympathetic of the white characters is racist). It is set in the Deep South around the time of the American Civil War and the attitudes of the people, particularly the upper class, are pretty accurately portrayed in my opinion. Several of the black characters are portrayed as being ignorant but they are playing slaves and former slaves who would have had no education at all in the real 1860s and would have deliberately been kept ignorant. Most of the white characters are deeply flawed people so it is not as if the movie is saying one race or colour are inherently better than another.
The heroine (if she is that at all) hates everyone who is not part of the same minute social set as herself i.e. everyone who is not an upper class, white, plantation owning, southern gentlewoman. She openly displays a greater hatred of people based on social class rather than race and her greatest insults are reserved for Yankees and White Trash.
What were they supposed to do re-write history and pretend it didn't happen.
Talk about diminishing real racism.
Not to mention that Hattie McDaniel was the very first black person to win an Oscar for her work in the film.
I've heard some utter tripe before but this takes the biscuit.
And yet she wasn't allowed to attend the première of Gone With the Wind in Atlanta. One of the Jim Crow laws in the South banned black people like her to sit with white patrons in public venues. Those laws didn't end for another 24 years.
She initially couldn't collect her Oscar because the hotel - where the ceremony was held - carry a 'no blacks allowed' policy. It took a studio to - putting it bluntly - bully the hotel owners into agreeing to let her in for one evening, but they still refused to let her sit with other actors in the main dining room. She had to sit at her table with her agent right at the back, next to the kitchen door.
Half of national film magazines refused to acknowledge McHattie and her Oscar win. There were several letters of complaints in every national newspaper in the US about her winning the Oscar.
Sidney Poitier - the second black person to win an Oscar - experienced almost all that himself when he won an Oscar for his performance in Lilies of the Field some 20 years later.
Good post.
It's two distinct halves, the first is about 104 minutes, the second just over two hours, it'd probably be better to watch them separately than in one go.
But yes, it's well worth seeing if you are interested in the history of cinema. The first half is better than the second in my opinion but when it's good it's amazing- none of the blockbusters of today can really hold a candle to it, it looks gorgeous and it does feel like you're watching history, a film from another time about another time.
Yes, if done today it would definitely be two movies. If Peter Jackson got hold of it it would probably be 7 or 8.