The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

Emile Zolas Liv

Biographical movies are tricky. Very few people lived a life that fit exactly into a Hollywood format, so when you see a biographical movie you have to wonder how real it is. Or when attempt are made to keep it real some of the flow or moment is sacrificed in the name of truth. Fortunately the life of Emile Zola was sufficiently interesting to make a nice movie out of it though I wonder if he really was as saintly as depicted in the film.  

According to this version of the story Zola started out as a poor writer slumming it with Cezanne. They were politically active and full of social indignation. His breakthrough was a portrait of a prostitute that became an instant bestseller and from then on he was on the track for stardom and wealth. Later in life he is roused from a complacent life by the Dreyfus scandal. In an attempt to cover up an internal leak in the military high command a lowly artillery officer is blamed with high treason. Zola being a staunch enemy of the high command clique is moved by Dreyfus’s wife to take action in writing and speeches, most notably his J’accuse article and his defense speech when he himself is accused for treason by the high command.

The saintly aspect is the most difficult part to cope with. Paul Muni got a lot of acclaim for his performance as Emile Zola, but for a modern viewer he becomes too two-dimensional as the saint-turned complacent-remade-into-sainthood. I like Paul Muni. He was really good and convincing in “I am a fugitive from a chain gang”, but Emile Zola is a very different character. He is a firebrand speaker, filled with social indignation, but also a cozy teddy of a grandfather type. The fact that Paul Muni is able to do both types, but also be the intense tightlipped fugitive in the chain gang movie testifies to his qualities as a character actor. The two-dimensionality problem rests with the direction and script.    

While this is obviously Paul Muni’s movie the character of Alfred Dreyfus, played by Joseph Schildkraut, is threatening to steal the stage. He is very convincing as the patriotic officer, who insists on his professionalism and his innocence, but whose spirit is gradually broken on the miserable island where he is imprisoned. He did end up getting an Oscar for best supporting act and it is well deserved. His wife on the other hand is terrible. The faithful, fighting wife crying out her desperation to move Zola into action is simply not convincing. It looks fake and overacted and it plays badly with Muni. After a while I was groaning every time she appeared.

I cannot help comparing Zola’s final speech during his trial with that of Mr. Smith in “Mr. Smith goes to Washington”. Where Smiths speech is an appeal to common decency to a jaded and corrupted audience and takes him nowhere, Zola’s speech is also dismissed by a corrupt military audience, but his speech is a much more clever oration. He is effectively exposing the hypocrisy of the military leadership and his accusers and while he is also declared guilty by default he manages to make his accusers the guilty part and effectively, in turn, brings down the military establishment. No need for a deus-ex-machina here. Singlehandedly he manages to turn the tide and talk his way out of his predicament.

The complot against Dreyfus was very real and also a real game changer in France and therefore in itself interesting to watch unfold in the movie. And the reality of it makes it relevant also today. The ranking establishment covering up for itself out of self-preservation is a recurrent phenomenon and choosing an outsider as scapegoat, in this case a Jewish junior officer, to take the blame is also something we are not done with. So, simply for these reasons the movie is worth seeing.

Had Zola been less pompous and more… human, this could easily have become one of my favorite movies of the thirties. As it is it is definitely one of the better ones and certainly entertaining. A history lesson from an age where history portrayed was usually heavily tainted by creative editing. This may be too, but it is less obvious.

L'Age D'Or (1930)

Guldalderen

Spanish-French surrealist movie art part 2.

In many ways what I wrote about “Un Chien Andalou” are also valid for L’Age D’Or. It is more of the same with the primary difference that it is better. Of course if you despised The Dog you are going to hate the Golden Age, but if like me you enjoy this sort of thing “L’Age d’Or” is a treasure throve of weird and hilarious surrealist imagery.

I have not figured out the story line. I suspect there is one, but I have not grasped it. So no point in explaining the story. There are some recurring characters though, most notably a man and a woman. First time we see them they make love on a beach in front of a bunch of dignitaries there to erect a statue in memory of some bishops who died there. The man is arrested and taken away into Rome, the city that later grew up on the place. He is freed when he shows the policemen (?) some papers that declare him to be important and so he goes to a party on a castle where the girl presumably lives. Here they continue their odd lovemaking until he go home to throw a plow, a burning tree, a bishop and a lot of pillow stuffing out on the street.

Somehow all this is just not really important. The great thing here is that all these scenes are funny and absurd to a point where even Monty Python must be envious. I will not be surprised to find that there is a deeper motive for the scenes but because they are made as they are they are funny in themselves. I will list a few of them.

A man at the castle is met by his little son. They obviously care for each other. The child teases him a runs away laughing and the father shoots him coldly and deliberately. The guest look out for like 5 seconds clearly thinking “oh, whatever”.

The woman enters her bedroom and finds a cow in her bed. She sighs and leads it out. The bell of the cow makes the man happy.

A man is walking down the street kicking a violin in front of him.

There are a bunch fighters (rebels? guerillas?) on the beach. They see the bishops, stagger out to fight them, but succumb one by one with no further reference to them.

In an isolated mountain castle a bunch of wealthy people have closed themselves off with a bunch of pretty girls and some women well versed in debauchery to indulge in a major orgy. Out steps… Jesus and a crippled old following. When a woman, obviously in pain attempts to follow them Jesus steps back and “deals” with her and he comes back alone.

There are a ton more of these scenes with no seeming relation to anything. Taken out of context they are bizarre, but what exactly is the context?

One scene I did get. Some of the guests at the castle step out of a car but leave behind a big crucifix, meaning that they are leaving holiness behind and what takes place in the castle is unholy.

Maybe one day I will understand what is really going on. Meanwhile I will enjoy guessing and for now I will laugh from the sheer weirdness of it all. That does not mean I am aloof to the deeper points. I just think like with The Dog that this was created also with a sparkle in the eye. We are supposed to enjoy all these bizarre tableaux. And I certainly do.

Die Büchse der Pandora (1929)

Die Büchse der Pandora

What is this fascination with the Femme Fatale?

I am losing count on how many movies I have seen about the dangerous woman who leads men into disaster. Especially in older movies women are either complacent trophy wives or dangerous femme fatales. Of course to a varying degree, but rarely beyond those two roles. My suspicion is it is because the movies are made by men and thus governed the male conflict of order and harmony version sexual animalistic lust. In that view the female is what we sexually hunger for, but this hunger threatens to ruin our orderly harmonic universe. Okay, I am no psychologist, but it kind of fits. This would explain why the sweet girls are usually strangely asexual, while the hot, sexual girls are portrayed as dangerous destroyers. They do not see themselves as such, it is a viewpoint imposed by men scared of their sexuality.

Maybe the most iconic example of this phenomenon is “Die Büchse der Pandora” (Pandora’s box) by Georg Wilhelm Pabst.

The protagonist and antagonist as the same person is Lulu (played by American Louise Brooks). She is a silly, happy girl with a boyish sexuality, who lives by her emotions and throws her attention around as a child. In itself just an innocent if childish person. The problem is the effect she has on men. With her easy uncaring sexuality she literally drives the men around her insane.

 It is an entire gallery of men.

There is Dr. Schön, a highly respected man who wants to marry another highly respected (and pretty) woman, but cannot let go of Lulu and end up dead and disgraced for it. There is Alwa, the son of Dr. Schön, who is also in love with Lulu, who throws away his comfortable life for a life on the shady side with gambling and booze and ruin to save Lulu. There is Jack the Ripper who succumbs to his desire to kill women by her influence and then there are the two parasites Schigolch and Rodrigo, who attach themselves to her for the fortunes that drip in her wake.

This is by no means a happy movie. If anything it is traumatic. It starts happy happy in an expensive apartment in the city, but descents to a cold and barren rooftop room with prostitution as the means for sheer survival. Everybody crave Lulu and everybody are ruined in the process and in the end even Lulu herself. Quite depressive, really.

I cannot help thinking that all these men are victims of their own deficiencies. If Dr. Schön is getting married to a pretty girl that he loves, why is he seeing a pleasure girl like Lulu? Is that not asking for trouble? If Lulu insists on sabotaging the variety show because she will not perform in front of Dr. Schön’s fiancée, why not let her sulk? It is her own future she is ruining, not Dr. Schön’s.

And Alwa, would it not be most natural for him to distance himself from Lulu, being as she is involved with his father’s death? And considering what it is costing him to help her? He does not owe her anything.

It annoys me when people in movies throw themselves into unnecessary trouble like this, but I suppose it is to express that deeper male conflict mentioned above and Lulu is just the catalyst.

The only person who seems to see Lulu not as an object but a real person is Countess Geschwitz. She sees Lulu as a victim and wants to help her for Lulu’s sake, but even she is destroyed by it as she has to sacrifice herself to the vermin Rodrigo to save Lulu and make herself, I presume, a murderess.

The object of the movie is to present the ultimate Femme Fatale, but what I really see is a victim of male vanity and weakness. It is terribly sad but also very well done, no doubt about it, if at times annoying.

Louise Brooks is brilliant as Lulu and this is definitely her movie. Her face and particularly her haircut became incredibly famous because of “Pandora’s Box”, and I suppose you can still today go to a hairdresser and ask for a “Lulu”.

As for me, it took a good long night’s sleep to recover from this movie.

Blackmail (1929)

Pengeafpresning

If there was one thing I was certain of going into the project of watching the entire 1001 list of movies to see before you die it was that I would get to see a lot of Mr. Hitchcock. His name stands as a beacon and the respect surrounding him is staggering. Even so he is still human. He still had flukes and he did have to practice to get where he eventually got. So far at this point on my quest I am only at 1939, so I have only seen his early work (beside the later classics like “Rear window” or “North by Northwest”), but what I can tell is that the beginning was as bumpy as any other later star director.

“Blackmail” I obtained as part of a box-set covering 9 movies, 4 silent, 4 talkies and then “Blackmail”, which is actually a hybrid as it was started as a silent, but later converted into a talkie. Of these 9 movies I consider “Blackmail” the best (closely followed by the silent “The Manxman”), partly because it sets the stage for many of Mr. Hitchcock’s later themes and partly because most of the others are simply not very good. One of his major problems was that he was struggling with inferior sound technology. “Blackmail” is so early that everybody dabbling in sound movies were using primitive equipment, but this does not improve until several years later (The 39 steps, 1935) for Mr. Hitchcock, resulting in unintelligible speech and annoying overload problems. If I cannot understand the dialogue I am simply lost. And who was that idiot who skipped the subtitles for the box-set edition?

That annoyance aside “Blackmail” offers a number of highlights. We get the love triangle drama, a murder (with a knife behind a curtain no less) and a terrible dilemma. Throw in a blonde female lead and a good dose of suspense and voila, we have the ingredients of a classic Hitchcock thriller.

Alice, the female lead is played by Hitchcock’s favorite Anny Ondra . She was Czech and had a decidedly non-British accent, which is fine when you a making a silent as “Blackmail” started out to be, but a bit of a handicap when she is supposed to be an average English girl in a London tobacco shop (though today it might actually be an advantage, London being one of the most multicultural cities in the world), so Mr. Hitchcock brought in a voice stand-in who dubbed her voice on Ondra’s mouth movements. This did not cease to annoy me throughout the movie as it makes the Alice character rather artificial looking. I think I would have preferred a Czech accent to this charade.

In any case Alice is dating Frank (John Longden), a Scotland Yard detective, but she is bored by him and just needs to ditch him so she can go out with the much more exciting artist Mr. Crewe. Trouble is Mr. Crewe is a rather forward acting type and before long he has invited this silly, naïve girl into his apartment and is making improper advances on Alice. Of course Alice will need to kill him instead of suffering a fate worse than death and does so in the aforementioned scene with a knife behind a curtain. Here Ondra is at her best with a shaking, panic-stricken expression holding a bloody knife. It just does not get any more Hitchcock.

Frank, being a good Scotland Yard detective knows Alice was with Mr. Crewe and as he is the detective on the case he is also in a position to find Alice’s glove in Mr. Crewe’s apartment. Evidence is building up against her, but he is the only one who knows. Or is he? When he seeks out Alice in the tobacco store her parents run she is a nervous wreck (we have an interesting play with sound as Alice hears only unintelligible sound except for the word KNIFE, which makes her jitterish). Just as he is about to get an explanation from him they are approached by a nasty gent who has found the other glove and now wants do a bit of blackmailing. What to do for Frank? Should he protect the girl who ditched him for a charlatan and protect her from this blackmailing scum? Or should he turn her in and neutralize the blackmail? Ta da, suspense.

“Blackmail” has as mentioned before all the classical Hitchcock ingredients, yet it does not work as well as his later movies and it is not only because of the sound quality and the Ondra dubbing. There is a dilettante element to all the acting and flow of the movie that makes it seem as if it is a bunch of amateurs who have decided to do a Hitchcock piece. They mean well, but I almost suspect that one of them will turn and smile at the camera: “Hi, mum!”. Of course it is just Mr. Hitchcock practicing to become MR. Hitchcock and this is a step on the way, but just so you are aware that there is a bit of way from here to “Psycho”.

I did enjoy “Blackmail”, absolutely. There are much worse movies on the list and it is an easy movie to get through. I just wish it was a bit more… crisp.

Potomok Chingis-Khana (1928)

Storm over Asien

”Storm over Asia” or “Potomok Chingis-Khana” as it is called in Russian is an epic drama taking place on the Mongolian steppes in the years following the Russian revolution. It is grand in format with a lengthy storyline, big sweeps over the endless plains and drawing on the historical legacy of Mongolia’s legendary Genghis Khan. In fact it is too big. As it is in no rush to tell the story it feels drawn out and I twice had to stop because I was falling asleep.

It does not change that “Storm over Asia” is an achievement and that is does have a lot of interesting features.

First of all unlike contemporary Russian films this one actually does have a lead and a rather unusual one. He is listed as Bair, the Mongol, but I actually do not remember his name mentioned throughout the movie. In any case Bair is a herdsman on the Mongolian steppes, living a traditional life in his family ger. His life is about to change when he instead of his sick father has to go to the trade station to sell fur.

This is a silent movie so I am not sure where the music actually comes from but it is well suited. For all the scenes on the steppes we get traditional Mongolian music. How often is it we get to see a movie (not documentary) featuring Mongolians? For this reason I find the opening part quite interesting. Not that I know anything about Mongolian lifestyle, but it looks quite right to me.

When Bair gets to the trade station another important feature of the movie is revealed. It is a highly political movie. Duh, of course. Any movie made in the Soviet Union at this time had to be political. That was the only way you could make movies. So, the theme in this story is the bad imperialists exploiting the native population of Mongolia and that the Mongols need to follow Moscow and take charge of their future. In a sense this is not so different from any similar western movie, except that the roles are turned upside down and, to clarify the message, the themes are highly exaggerated. Not as much as Eisenstein would do, but still plenty.

And the imperialist enemy is the English.

First time I saw this I was caught by surprise. What on Earth is the English army doing in Mongolia? I have searched the net for information on this but nowhere have I found anything about an English expeditionary force in Mongolia. In any case the reason the English are there in force in the movie is not because they really were there but because for the purpose they represent the perfect imperialist bad guys.  The director has taken all the worst elements of English colonialism as it played out in other parts of the third world and transplanted it to Mongolia. So, we have English fur traders who under the protection of English troops cheat the natives, kill summarily, make friends with the religious leaders to control the population (according to communist thinking religion was keeping the people in bondage) and setup a puppet ruler to rule through him.

Bair, our Mongol proletarian hero, is first cheated by the English, then escapes to fight with the communist rebels. When the English in their endless greed attempt to steal a large amount of life stock Bair is fighting it and captured as a rebel. He is taken to be shot in an excellent scene where the English solider is clearly not happy about his orders, but go through with it nonetheless, indicating that it is not the English people but the imperialist system that is criminal.

At that moment the English find a document among Bairs belongings that marks him as direct descendent from the great Genghis Khan. Actually it was a note he got from a monk and not his at all. This changes everything. Now they want to make him a dupe that they can use to rule Mongolia through. Only, they just shot him. Fortunately he was only shot through the shoulder so he lives, but with enough bandages to fix up a small army, including the obligatory head bandage.

This part of the movie I find most entertaining. The English trying to “civilize” the barbarian with suits, fancy drinks and socializing with English women. All these representatives of Western decadence. You would almost think they found real English actors for these parts and I am amazed how inside the Soviet Union it was possible to dress up these people according to the latest fashion.

It is quite amazing how the English manipulators could think that they could tale this guy that they had cheated and fought and played for a fool and think they can sway him and play him as a marionette. Of course it explodes and that last Storm over Asia is indeed a grand finale.

You have to stomach a number of difficult assumptions to accept this movie and arm yourself with a lot of patience. If you do that you get some glorious moments, both of Mongol life, clash of cultures and bitter struggle plus of course the final fury. In between however this is a sleeping pillow and really from a modern point of view the political statements are so exaggerated that they seem more like a mockery than in any way convincing. But then we are not Russians of the twenties.           

M (1931)

M

There is something monumental about one-letter titles. As if saying that with one letter we have said it all, it is enough, the associations generated speaks for itself.

Of course it is far-fetched, but if one movie deserved such a monument it would be “M”.

I can just as well say it right away: Among the 100 first movies on the list this is my favorite. On any scale it is a top ranker and I know I am not the only one with high regards for “M”.

What is then so special about “M”? Is it not just another crime flick?

With an overbearing smile I shake my head: No no no no, “M” is truly special.

“M” was, I believe, the last movie Fritz Lang made before he left for America. Ironically the reason was that it was rumored that Hitler wanted him to be his director, so it was time to leave Dodge City. Ironically, because Lang in his movies and particularly in “M” is quite anti-fascist. Hitler was just too stupid to see that.

Fritz Lang was part of the highly skilled group of German directors who trained in the German expressionist school were able to tell stories on many levels even simply through the cinematography. This is done extensively in “M”, so that the ambience is dense. The fear and anguish when the mother at the opening of the film waits for her little Elsie to come home and it dawns on her that she may have been taken by the murderer. Or the desperation of the law enforcement when they are getting nowhere no matter how much they try.

The city is haunted by a child murderer, Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), who mysteriously spirits away children. We do not see him commit the acts, but when we hear him whistle Grieg’s “I Dovregubbens Hall” we know he is on the prowl, and the neck hairs start rising. We want to scream to the child to get away from the monster, but in the end we just see the toy roll away and we know it is too late. This is so skillfully done that it is just as effective today for a jaded audience as it was in 31.

The city is working itself into a frenzy over this child murderer. Really the worst threat is a threat to our children. Who is the murderer? It could be anyone. Somebody a little too friendly to a child and he is immediately a suspect and the parents guard their children from just about everybody. Pedophiles are just about the most horrible kind of people, but today we a frequently hit by pedophilia hysteria not unlike what we see in “M” and it is incredibly destructive to the cohesiveness of society, but a total disaster for those falsely accused. The libel of a suspected pedophile is unshakeable and guarantees isolation.

The police are totally upbeat about it. With German thoroughness they literally comb the city for any trace of the killer. Lack of success just makes them even more thorough and the people who take the brunt of that effort is the criminal underworld.  The smugglers, thieves, bootleggers and gangsters are feeling threatened by all this attention from the police. They figure it is the murderers fault so the solution must be to get him out of the way. He is ruining it for everybody. In a spectacular scene we switch back and forth between a police planning meeting and the war council of the gangsters and they are saying exactly the same things. If this is to indicate that the police are using gangster methods or the gangsters have taken over from the police I do not know.

In each their ways they are now getting somewhere.

The police find out who he is, not through a massive and brutal police effort, but through classic detective work, by being smart.

The gangsters set the beggars to look out for the murderer. They can cover the entire city and nobody takes any notice of them. And true enough soon they got him spotted. One of the beggars plant a chalk “M” on his shoulder and now his is literally a marked man.

Beckert flees into an office building and the gangsters now make a veritable heist to get to him. This is definitely one of the many highlights, like an early “Ocean’s Eleven”. They get him and take him to a court of their own to judge him. Here we have one of the most talked about scenes of the movie. In this mock court of law Beckert admits to his crimes, but still pleads innocent. He has no control of what he is doing. How can he be punished for something he cannot control? They, the judges, they are criminals by choice. They could stop any day, but do not. Who are guilty here? Who are they to judge him?

Just when we thought this was as simple crime case it is turned upside down, because we too are busy judging him. Do we buy his defense? Against such crimes is there any defense and would we listen to it?

“M” is expertly made. It is innovative in many ways, but it is the shear suspense and imagination by the director which drives the movie. And the relevance. That has not changed. The fear, the hysteria, the overzealous police, the eagerness to judge and of course criminals who threaten our children.

But man, you get smoker’s lungs just from watching it…

Gone with the Wind (1939)

Borte med Blæsten

There are many notable watersheds in film history. The advent of sound for example. But one of the major ones got to be “Gone with the Wind”. This movie redefined what a big Hollywood production is and can do and simply set a new standard. If you wanted to impress, this was the one to top. On every parameter “Gone with the Wind” was bigger than anything seen before, even on running time it would make von Stroheim and Gance blush in embarrassment.

It was also the most expensive movie ever, the most ambitious cinematography, most important adaption, most directors worn out, most Oscars and if the rumor is right the most spectacular infight among the divas of Hollywood to become Scarlett O’Hara.

To use a cliché, if you have not heard of “Gone with the Wind” you have been living under a rock.

Yet I had never seen it before.

Not for lacking any opportunity. It is to this day frequently on television and the stable of any half-decent video collection. It has just never been my thing. Like musicals or gangster movies I have always skirted family dramas. Now I got the chance and… it is still not my thing. Oh, it is a very impressive movie! And it is gripping enough to keep you there for the 4 hours it takes to get through it. I am just not really into the subject.

“Gone with the Wind” is made of the same fabric as romantic pulp literature and could easily have become intolerably sweet. Already it performs a sort of historical white-washing of the Old South, but it could have been even worse if it had not been for the complexity of the characters, most notably Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable).

Scarlett is the classical spoiled, egocentric and manipulative Southern Belle and in a pulp version she would have grown up to become a loving and caring mother/wife/heroine. Instead she develops strength to become a powerful spoiled, egocentric and manipulative Southern Belle. We are always let to believe that her association with Melanie (Olivia de Havilland), Rhett or crisis of war is reforming her and opening her mind to other people’s needs and wishes. Instead time and again we see the egocentric monster reappearing. She wants what she cannot have and she will get it no matter how many dead bodies or broken hearts she has to walk over. In the end she cares for no-one but herself.

Rhett is not just an appendage to Scarlett. While we never really find out where he is coming from he is the person that she can never manipulate. He is smitten by her but not blinded like everybody else. He sees the strength in her, her spirit and loves her for it, yet he refuse to fall into her net. And because she cannot manipulate him she hates him and is yet attracted to him. In the end it is her egoism that keeps them apart for long and ruins it for them in the end. The main difference between the two is that Rhett knows his own weaknesses. He rests in himself, yes, but he also tries to do the right thing when the cause is good. Scarlett on the other hand is blind to her own weaknesses to the point of idiocy and “right or wrong” comes second to her own needs.

Like Julie in “Jezebel” Scarlett insists on getting the one man she cannot have. She cannot get it into her head that maybe he does not want her. In fact Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) is deeply devoted to his angel of a wife, Melanie, and is not hiding it. The only thing that keeps him from slapping Scarlett whenever she insinuates herself on him is his own decency. He is a good man, a perfect man for Melanie, and I feel truly sorry for him to be the target of Scarlett’s infatuation. Throughout the story Scarlett is psychopathically driven to do horrible things, mainly to keep some grip of Ashley. Her first husband she marries in a failed attempt at making him envious (as if he cared). Her caring for Melanie is no generosity toward Melanie, but aimed at Ashley and she plays on Melanie’s goodness to keep him in town when he wants to go to New York.

Even when she does marry Rhett and seem to have found mutual happiness it is always her infatuation with Ashley that tears them apart. She just cannot let it go.

In a movie with plenty of heartbreak for me the strongest scenes are those with Scarlett’s and Rhett’s daughter Bonnie. She is a darling and Rhett loves her dearly. In a time where Scarlett (again) cannot forget Ashley it is Bonnie that keeps them together. Rhett will suffer for the sake of his daughter, while Scarlett’s complaint is that Bonnie loves her father more than her mother. Rhett is just being a good father. When the situation becomes intolerable Rhett leaves for London with Bonnie, but the girl need both her parents and for her sake he returns. When Bonnie tragically dies (horrible scene!) there is no glue left. Rhett correctly gauge the situation and leaves, fed up with Scarlett. He was never a victim of her manipulations, but he used to love her and she squandered it away. Now he just does not care. His parting words: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”, has become iconic.

Scarlett and Julie in “Jezebel” are very similar characters and they are very difficult for me to root for, yet they seem to be prevalent in this sort of stories.  These are stories of idle nobility where the women have been rendered useless by wealth and lack of professional ambition with social activity their sole occupation. Their impractical dresses are a giveaway. They are useless. Any ambition they may have must be turned in a social direction creating saints (Melanie) or monsters (Scarlett). Fortunately we have come a long way since then.

The cinematography of “Gone with the Wind” is stunning. Filmed in beautiful Technicolor it has none of the garish colors of “Robin Hood” or “The Wizard of Oz”, but uses tones in perfect alignment with the context. The fire of Atlanta is so exceptional because of the intelligent use of color. It just would not have been half as effective in black and white.

It was an overwhelming experience to see this movie and with “Gone with the Wind” it does not feel like I am in the thirties anymore, but in a much later age. It would be many years before the rest of Hollywood caught up.