#tcm essentials

Gone With the Wind (1939)

I am going through the films listed in TCM’s Essentials, Volume 1.  I watched Gone With the Wind in two parts last week and I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about it.  What to say.  I took my time watching it.  It’s a 2-DVD movie!  I cried a good amount in the second half and, what’s more, I enjoyed the second half as well as the first.  But why?  The guilt I have for liking this movie!  Such white guilt.  So I’ve been mulling this one over.  And I read some stuff on line about what different African American celebrities have to say about it and tried to work out why this movie is a target when I have seen much worse stereotypes in other films.  I came to the conclusion that Gone With the Wind is more problematic than some other films because of how popular the movie still is.  Without considering it being a story about some of the people that wanted to keep slavery, the confederates, and don’t we feel bad for them and damn those yankees but, wait, they’re the bad guys so damn them!?  Somehow none of that crossed my mind as I watched Scarlett blow it with Rhett time and time again.  I didn’t think about Mammy being her slave when they traveled to Atlanta and Scarlett failed to woo Rhett and thus hooked a moderately wealthy shopkeeper instead.  I didn’t think about Prissy being her slave as she twirled and sang to herself trying to avoid telling Miss Scarlett that no doctor was coming to help poor Mellie.  These characters are presented as servants in Downton Abbey fashion only Prissy and Mammy weren’t paid.  Gone With the Wind is problematic.

Visually, Gone With the Wind is a gorgeous film.  It’s so lovely that the first ever credit for production design was given to its designer, William Cameron Menzies.  The clothes are lovely, the setting is lovely, the actors are beautiful and the whole thing speaks epic.

Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable are an incomparable pair.  Their characters are equals in venom, ambition, and beauty.  Both love the other but neither can get it right.  But when Rhett finally proposes to Scarlett as she mourns her second husband’s untimely death, well, that is my favorite part of the movie.  That scene is priceless.

I also love Olivia de Havilland’s character of the pale-faced-mealy-mouthed ninny, Melanie.  She is so weak yet imperturbably kind.  The sort of character you would love to hate because she is so good but you can’t hate her because she is so devoted to Scarlett.  Melanie even helps hide the fact that Scarlett shot a Yankee intruder, just like Vincent Vega shot Marvin, in the face.  She’s Scarlett’s only friend.

Then there’s Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel.  Mammy, the first black person to win an Oscar and the only black person to win for the first 34 years of Oscar history.  I can be pretty sure the only African American woman to accept an award given to her at a segregated Academy Award ceremony.  When you say it like that, it almost sounds condescending.  But I love Hattie McDaniel in this film.  I love it when she tells Scarlett she can’t show her bosom before 3 o’clock.  I love it when she gives Rhett the mean face and then later has drinks with him as his daughter is being born.  And I really love how she cries as she tells Mellie how the death of the Butler child has ravaged Rhett and Scarlett into monsters.  I cried too.  And I thought about Hattie with that rag on her head, remembering to talk like Mammy as she cried and cried and I thought she was wonderful.  And as Hattie McDaniel, herself a child of a slave, once said, ‘I’d rather play a maid than be one’.

Rear Window (1954)

I don’t have a single bad thing to say about this movie.  I’ve seen it a thousand times and I still get frightened when she goes to the suspected killer’s apartment.

Hitchcock wrote in the part for Grace Kelly - it wasn’t part of the original story.  Neither were any of the subplots, like Miss Torso or Miss Lonely Heart.  But those additions make the story into a fun movie and make the film Essential.

James Stewart ain’t too shabby either.  If you’ve been keeping track, this is the third film starring Jimmy Stewart in the Essential collection.  No - it’s not too much.  Although his character is often a sort of gentle, over-explainer - he’s an every-man.  And he goes where every man can go.  So his movies remain accessible three quarters of a century later. 

And Thelma Ritter - has there ever been a film she was in where you did NOT like her part? 

White Heat (1949)

I didn’t think I liked James Cagney movies.  But it could be the only one I’ve seen is Public Enemy.  I liked this one.  #25 in TCM’s book of 52 Essentials (Volume 1).  Remember the book lists them chronologically not best to worst or vice versa.

Something about the wicked way his mother helps him do crime.  And about the lack of joy Virginia Mayo gets from being the wife of a crime boss.  And about the undercover cop and the small tricks and valleys he stumbles through.  That totally reminded me of the scene in Reservoir Dogs when Tim Roth is on the roof rehearsing his back story.  This undercover cop rehearses his back story in the police station but still he rehearses.  Quentin - I bet you saw White Heat and stuck that scene away for later... didn’t you?

I want to go back to Virginia Mayo because this is the second Essential film she has been in.  The first one was The Best Years of Our Lives where she plays the show-girl wife of Dana Andrews.  She’s happy he’s home from the war but not so happy her life has to settle down.  In White Heat she’s crass, wonton, beautiful, and bad.  Her character is awesome and she does an awesome job at it.