Le Vent

How many times can a girl watch Gone with the Wind?

I just downloaded Tara's Theme (The Main Title), and it has definitely been on repeat for the past two hours faithfully getting me through AP US History notecards. Steiner's score takes me far back to my younger years (lately I've been feeling positively senile even though I'm not even an adult yet) to the days when my mother and I used to watch the Civil War epic religiously almost every weekend. Four hours of time well spent in my opinion.

When I was a little girl, everything was so black and white. Scarlett and Rhett were meant for each other and SPOILER it was ridiculous that they didn't end up together. Ashley was inconsequential. Scandals didn't really register. Romance and wealth and futures were supposed to be simple; things that rendered life less complicated. Gone with the Wind was one of the first color motion pictures. How wonderful must it have been to see the bright and full rainbow large in front of you for the first time? I appreciate the technicolor now. I know how hard it is to give up on a dream, how deceptive love and trust can look, how safe and warm home is after a long time away during which obstacles creep up on you and only heighten on the return trip. Life isn't stark contrasts of black and white or sun and moon or heaven and hell. Life isn't gray either. Life is bright and dull colors, swirls of grace and stumbling, hunger and sumptuous dishes, cascades of silk gloves marred by aching fingers. There aren't any white knights and dark villians, no whores, no saints.

The title card says something different. It reads "There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here, in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind... " Of course, the antebellum South was neither this pretty nor this kind. There was only an illusion of gallantry. But, I suppose it's helpful to remember things through a veil of nostalgia and to see things from someone else's perspective. As Rhett Butler says "I want peace. I want to see if somewhere there isn't something left in life of charm and grace." There is all too little of that left today and perhaps there was always a dearth. In any event, Gone with the Wind, despite not always being beautiful, is enduring in its humanity for it portrays the basic desire to want something or someplace that evokes safety. A wonderful film and an equally wonderful book.