Gone
with the Wind Journal
1. Relate
what was discussed in class or the text to the screening.
Before Gone with the Wind, most African American actors and actresses were used as extras in domestic roles or were seen as happy, genial help. They were also seen as marginalized talent like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson were casted in musicals and comedies and were rarely given lead roles.
From
1915 to 1950, there were approximately 500 “Race” films that were produced for
an all-black audience with all-black casts, showing parallel cinema evolving
outside of the Hollywood system. Most of those films were funded and produced
by black filmmakers, but white backers financed some of the films. Early black
filmmakers like George and Perry Johnson founded the Lincoln Motion Picture
Company in 1916. The most prolific African American filmmaker of his time was
Oscar Micheaux, who directed 40 films like The
Exile and Temptation, and worked
with Paul Robeson.
When
Gone with the Wind was released in
1939, it not only featured accomplished actors like Clark Gable and Vivien
Leigh, but it also saw the rise of Hattie McDaniel, who became the first
African-American to win an Academy Award. Besides her award, the film also won 7
other awards, including Best Picture, and Best Actress (Vivien Leigh). The film was also one of the first
films shot in Technicolor, and was ranked 4th all-time in the
American Film Institute’s list of top 100 Best American Films.
When
I saw the film in class, I was blown away by the imagery and story that was
told. It is pretty much the perfect movie for anyone looking for his or her
emotions to go on a roller-coaster ride.
2. Find a related article and summarize the content. (on the film, director, studio, actor/actress, artistic content, etc.) You can use the library or the Internet. Cite the article or copy the url to your journal entry. Summarize in your own words the related article but do not plagiarize any content.
This
article gives a brief introduction about Michael Sragow’s book, “Victor
Fleming: An American Movie Master,” by comparing Fleming to the likes of Orsen
Welles, John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock. Sragow stated that Fleming was a filmmaker
who “didn't try to stick out so much as fit in; the man-for-hire who could
saddle up to any studio assignment — even a work in progress — and mold it to
perfection.” He also argued that despite his success with Wizard of Oz and Gone with
the Wind, Fleming was still denied his place in “the cinematic pantheon.”
In
this book, Sragow tells the story of Flemings climb from doing westerns, epic
period pieces, and goofball comedies, to working with great stars like Douglas
Fairbanks (which got him into the studios), Clark Gable, and Judy Garland. Many
people who worked with Fleming considered him to be a “powerful man, and so
strong that he wouldn’t do anything until it was his way.” A great example of
that was when he was working on Wizard of
Oz, and Judy Garland couldn’t stop giggling at the pseudomenacing advance
of the Cowardly Lion. Fleming took Garland to the side, gave her a slap on the
cheek and told her that this is “serious.” Apart from that, he treated all of his actors like adults,
which lead to startling results.
Some
of the highlights that were mentioned in the book were how he got introduced to
MGM Studios, his way with talent while working with talent during Wizard of Oz. It also highlighted his underappreciated
work in Gone with the Wind, which won
him an Oscar for Best Picture, and his last film Joan of Arc that lead to him having an affair with Ingrid Bergman.
The
writer of the article states that the argument is not only persuasive, but it also
makes for a powerful case study on “how power was acquired, wielded, and lost
during the 1930’s and 40’s. Fleming worked hard to take control of some of the
most “ambitious, unwieldy and risky epics in movie history,” along with
touching the lives of the people he has met and worked with and helped shape
their careers.
3. Apply the article to the film screened in class. How did the article support or change the way you thought about the film, director, content, etc.?
The article supports what I thought about the film because of how much effort Victor Fleming put into it. Fleming saved this film when he took over for George Cukor halfway through the shooting. F. Scott Fitzgerald considered Fleming to be a “fine adaptable mechanism — which in the morning could direct the action of two thousand extras, and in the afternoon decided on the colors of the buttons of Clark Gable's coat and the shadows on Vivien Leigh's neck.” His “tensile strength,” in Gone with the Wind ultimately landed him a well-deserved Oscar win for Best Director.
4. Write a critical analysis of the film, including your personal opinion, formed as a result of the screening, class discussions, text material and the article. I am less interested in whether you liked or disliked a film, (although that can be part of this) than I am in your understanding of its place in film history or the contributions of the director.
Gone with the Wind has a certain freshness of the story, the power of the emotions it conveys and the beautiful, detailed images of a time long gone. That this film was made in the 1930's is almost incomprehensible to me. This film is also a demonstration of the best the studio system could do in that fabled year of 1939, and it showed that the studios had finally "got" putting together a costume drama that conveys true raw human emotions and reactions and even eroticism without crossing that pesky production code line.
Gone with the Wind is a prime example of
quality American cinema. Whether the movie is for you or not, one has to give
it it's due credit as one of the most finely made films ever to come out of
Hollywood. Gone with the Wind changed the way movies are made.
CHECKLIST FOR PLAGIARISM
1) ( ) I have not handed in
this assignment for any other class.
2) ( ) If I reused any
information from other papers I have written for other classes, I clearly
explain that in the paper.
3) ( ) If I used any
passages word for word, I put quotations around those words, or used
indentation and citation within the text.
4) ( ) I have not padded the
bibliography. I have used all sources cited in the bibliography in the text of
the paper.
5) ( ) I have cited in the
bibliography only the pages I personally read.
6) ( ) I have used direct
quotations only in cases where it could not be stated in another way. I cited
the source within the paper and in the bibliography.
7) ( ) I did not so over-use
direct quotations that the paper lacks interpretation or originality.
8) ( ) I checked yes on steps 1-7 and therefore
have been fully transparent about the research and ideas used in my paper.
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