It is hard to believe my all time favorite film is turning 70 years old. It is being re-premiered at the Earl Smith Strand Theatre in
It follows Katie Scarlett O’Hara as she grows from an adorable spoiled brat into a woman without losing her selfish, vain, stubborn and manipulative traits.
I almost like Scarlett until she marries Frank Kennedy.
You can tell by the look on Mammy’s face that she is horrified at Scarlett’s selfishness. I guess when she said “If I have to steal, lie, and cheat I will never go hungry again” I did not think steal would include her sister’s fiancé.
Then after Frank is killed and she marries Rhett and she has Bonnie Blue
Maybe if she'd ended up with Ashley in an alternate universe that would have brought out unselfishness in her? As I was typing this, Rhett himself answered me.
Rhett: I feel sorry for you.
Scarlett: Sorry for me?
Rhett: Yes, sorry for you, because you're throwing away happiness with both hands and reaching out for something with both hands that'll never make you happy.
If you were free and Miss Mellie were dead and you had your precious honorable Ashley you think you'd be happy with him? You'd never know him; never even understand his mind, any more than you understand anything, except money.
Rhett's really like a romance novel hero come to life and walking around
- he totally takes Scarlett into his arms and does the "you've never really
been kissed before now" kiss.
Almost equally unsavory is Scarlett’s disdain for "white trash"
and the noble prostitute, Belle, who saves Ashley's life later on,
in spite of Scarlett. It is just easy to hate her, and I almost
believed I did...but despite it all I do like her. She's just so
spunky - I mean: she shoots a marauding Yankee in the face
point blank, she forces her younger sisters into hard labor,
she says things like "I can shoot straight, as long as I don't
have to shoot very far"! In 1868, that would have been
downright radical.
She is a paradox this lovely Scarlett O'Hara.
She is the ultimate survivor and the heroine we love to hate.
1 comment:
MSN:
I've seen GWTW so many times, it's just for entertainment anynore. I find it wonderful to see the DEPTH of the characters, especially Scarlett.
She's deviously complex for the time she lived in, and it makes you wonder how she'd fare in TODAY'S world, doesn't it?
Do we really hate her?
Or do we pity her?
Or perhaps empathize with her in some manner?
One of the best written characters in all of literature, AND the movies.
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