Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Break out the Kleenex Because It's Time To Give A Damn!
Gone With The Wind is more than a movie, it's an American pop icon, a true legend in film making and the winner of 9 Academy Awards including Best Picture. I'll spare you a plot summary because by now nearly everyone knows the story. Just bring Kleenex and be prepared to give a damn!
Unfortunately, this film was mastered on DVD by the old MGM, cost cutting regime in the days before Warner assumed control of the Selznick catalogue. Though the film has been transfered from restored Technicolor elements and the sound has been remixed to 5.1 surround, this is a disappointing visual experience overall when one considers what it might have been. Colors are well balanced but there is a considerable amount of film grain inherent in the print. Fine details shimmer throughout, there is considerable edge enhancement in many scenes and often contrast and shadow delineation suffer in extremely dark scenes. To be sure the sweeping and epic melodrama never fails to captivate. The transfer just happens to fall short of expectations. Also, there are no extras, presumably because Warner owns the rights to the Turner documentary, "The Making Of A Legend" and didn't want to loan it out to MGM when the original DVD transfer was being prepared. Very soon though, Warner Brothers needs to go back to the drawing board on this DVD, give us a remastered print, as well as the documentary, screen tests and other supplimentary material that an essential classic like Gone With The Wind so rightfully deserves. For it has been said that in the history of American cinema there have only been two movies made - Gone With The Wind and everything else! That's not an understatement.
Rating:  - Gone with the Wind
1939: Gone with the Wind was Margaret Mitchell's only novel. It was considered by many to be the "Great American novel." From the best selling book came the movie.Gone with the Wind took the Oscars by storm with more than eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It starred Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel were the 1939 Oscar winners for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively. It was also voted #4 on the American Film Institute's 100 Best Motion Pictures of All Time. The masculine Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) attempted to win the heart of the untamable Scarlett O'Hara. (Vivian Leigh) Scarlett a courageous Southern belle longed for the man of her dreams, Ashley Wilkes. (Leslie Howard) Ashley married the kind and loving lady Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). During this dramatic film, Scarlett endures hardships, war, death and loss. When Tara, her plantation home is threatened, she portrays a heroic part. She will do anything to protect her family plantation home. This romantic film has an unforgettable sound track. The burning of Atlanta is an unforgettable sight, with the flames deep in red, orange and yellow colors. And you can't forget the famous phrase "But, Rhett, what shall I do? Where shall I go?" and Rhett replies, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." I give Gone with the Wind five stars. This movie is about hope, love and hardships. I believe it was and still remains an inspirational film. This movie is an all time great!
Rating: - Civil War Epic and Hollywood Giant
Gone With The Wind is one of the most monumental films in movie history. It was a blockbuster before the term was coined and it still ranks among the most popular films of all time. The movie is a sweeping adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's novel about life in the Deep South before, during and after the Civil War. Filmed in brilliant color, the movie explodes off the screen and is filled with unforgettable performances. Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh create two of the most famous screen characters in Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. Rhett is a dashing rogue whose allegiance is not to the South, but to lining his own pockets. Scarlett is the classic, self-absorbed Southern belle, who thinks that the world revolves around her. In the early Hollywood days, black actors were regulated to nothing more than bit performers, but Hattie McDaniel rises above the stereotypical housemaid role of Mammy to deliver a powerful performance. Olivia de Havilland has fragile beauty in role of the doomed Melaine and Leslie Howard is stodgy and proper as Scarlett's true love, Ashley Wilkes. The film has been criticized, and rightly so in some places, for glorifying the slavery days of the South. While the beginning of the film does deserve the criticism as it does promulgate stereotypes such as the character of Prissy and there are other sections that can be perceived as such, it is not a wholly sympathetic take on the South. The film is notable for the fact that Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award as she took home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar (sadly it would take another twenty-four years before another African-American would win when Sidney Poitier in 1963 and another fifty-one years before an African-American woman would win when Whoopie Goldberg won in 1990). Ms. Leigh won her first Best Actress Oscar and film dominated the 1939 Academy Awards winning a total of nine awards (one of was an honorary Oscar) including Best Picture and Best Director for Victor Fleming.
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