YMMV / Gone with the Wind

• Adaptation Displacement: The novel this film is based on, while still relatively popular, is far less remembered than the movie. Generally it's not discovered until adulthood.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Nearly the whole cast can fall under this.
  • Scarlett is one of the most enigmatic characters of cinema and literature. Some can't decide whether she's the Designated Hero or a Villain Protagonist. Notably while she's a selfish and manipulative Jerkass to a lot of people, she cares deeply for Rhett, Ashley and Melanie. Even jealous at Melanie ending up with Ashley, she still helps deliver Mellie's baby and drive her all the way from Atlanta to Tara. She's also the ultimate pragmatist - and most of her actions in Part 2 are done out of motivation to help Tara, rotten though some of them may be. Some even go an extra step and claim that Scarlett suffers from histrionic personality disorder, given her exaggerated and quick-to-change emotions, constant flirting with others, dramatic disposition, and desire for attention and validation (without the depersonalization and constant testing of others that would instead characterize borderline personality disorder).
  • There's a story out there that Butterfly Mc Queen had one of these about her character: Prissy certainly knows "bout birthing babies," She simply could not give less of a fuck about Melanie, her baby, or the well being of any other slaveholder, and was getting revenge in the only way she could - by Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • Did Melanie know all along that Scarlett was pining for Ashley? There are many hints, such as her adamantly defending her sister-in-law and husband when they're accused of having an affair, but telling Scarlett they won't talk about it because there is no room in their life for idle gossip. Scarlett realizes that she can't disappoint Mellie and keeps the confession to herself. There's also her last words, telling Scarlett that Rhett loves his wife and to be kind to him. Perhaps she knew that Scarlett has Melanie as The Conscience, and was satisfied with that.
  • Covert Pervert for Ashley. For all his high morals, not only can he barely hold himself from giving in to Scarlett's advances, but there's also the question of Melanie's second pregnancy. Since pretty much everybody knew that having another child would kill her and since Melanie would have been highly unlikely to cheat... the implications are pretty unfortunate indeed. Likewise after Melanie's death, Scarlett finally realises that Ashley did love her. She outright says that had Ashley told her he loved Melanie more, she would have probably been able to move on. Ashley never once tells Scarlett, despite having plenty of opportunities to. Was he just too timid to break Scarlett's heart, despite the good it would have done them in the long run? Or did he enjoy the idea of the unattainable Scarlett throwing herself at him?
  • Actually, the book implies that Mellie enjoyed her marital relations, an interesting contrast to Scarlett, who saw it as a means to an end. In the end, Scarlett seems to think that Melanie was the one with all the power, because she was loved by everyone. Note that although Melanie is The Ingenue, she's clearly not naive; she helps Scarlett cover up the dead deserter, and recognizes that Scarlett ruined Suellen's marriage prospects for the good of Tara. And for the incident with Ashley and Scarlett being caught together, she is courteous to Scarlett at the party not out of naivety - but because she knows it'll put the gossipers to rest.
  • Is Rhett a charming rogue or an abusive jerk? As cited in the "Unsympathetic" post, he gets a sick thrill out of provoking Scarlett to anger, then laughs in her face. In Real Life, and especially today, such behavior would certainly be considered emotional/verbal abuse. Scarlett isn't wrong when she points out Ashley's refined manners—one of the few legitimate reasons for her infatuation—in comparison to Rhett's deliberate coarseness. On the other hand, Scarlett is an abusive personality as well; she's the more physically abusive of the two, and often resorts to slapping anyone when they won't do what she wants them to (which is considered abuse by today's standards) and her attitude to Rhett leaving her to fight in the war is to scream that she hopes he gets killed violently. So it's likely they both brought out the other's worse qualities, although Scarlett was already slap-happy before she even met Rhett (she slapped Ashley for announcing he'd marry Melanie instead of her).
• And You Thought It Would Fail:
  • David O. Selznick tried to talk Louis B. Meyer out of making the film, saying, "Forget it, Louis. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel". Needless to say, he wound up eating those words. Ironically, Selznick would later unsuccessfully attempt to replicate the film's smash success with later productions.
  • Olivia de Havilland's agent tried to talk her out of doing the film, as he was convinced that the film wouldn't make money.
  • Gary Cooper turned down Rhett Butler because he thought the film would flop, going so far as to allegedly say, "I'm glad it's Clark falling on his face and not me." Oops.
• Award Snub: A studio enforced one. Olivia de Havilland (Melanie) and Vivien Leigh (Scarlet) were both favorites to be nominated for Best Actress, but the studio didn't want to have its two leading ladies compete against each other, so they campaigned instead for de Havilland to be nominated for Best Supporting Actress, which naturally didn't please her. However, Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress instead (the first black person to ever win an Oscar), which Olivia gladly agreed she deserved.
• Awesome Music: There is a reason Max Steiner's score was nominated for an Academy Award. Take a listen for yourself.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Even before the film was announced, fans of the book only had Clark Gable mind for Rhett Butler. To say nothing of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara.
• Crack Pairing: Rhett and Melanie. It helps that Rhett genuinely likes, respects, and admires her throughout the book. Alexandra Ripley, who wrote the sequel Scarlett, seems to have sensed this as well—one of her key plots is Rhett marrying someone who is clearly Melanie's Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Modern day readers easily guess that Ashley is suffering from PTSD due to his war experiences, that Scarlett developed post-partum depression after Wade's birth, and that Ella either has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or ADHD, but this goes unnoticed due to the standards of psychiatric care at the time. At best, Scarlett's sadness is believed to related to Charles' death, while Ella is dismissed as "silly".
• Ending Fatigue: Part two can feel like this when you wonder how many Deus Angst Machinas Scarlett is going to endure before the story wraps things up.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mammy, due to being a Fair for Its Day portrayal. She's still thoughtful and compassionate, despite being servile to white people, as well as being hilariously snarky. She was enough of one to bag Hattie McDaniel an Oscar, the first one ever awarded to an African American.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Prissy on the other hand, has not received the same response. She's lazy, incompetent, loud, has an annoying high pitched voice that'll make your ears bleed, and The Load on the ride back to Tara. Scarlett's slap and constant berating of her is considered for many to be a satisfying Take That, Scrappy!.
• Fair for Its Day:
  • The decision to cast African-American actors in a major motion picture instead of resorting to Blackface, like many other have done at the time, can be considerer a big step in 1939.
  • Despite the painful caricature that is Prissy, Mammy is still a surprisingly decent representation of a black woman. She's shown to be more intelligent, competent, and compassionate than a lot of the white characters despite her status as a servant. Hattie McDaniel (Mammy's actress) even won an Oscar for the role.
  • Despite the film's supposed pro-Southern Lost Cause revisionism, there is a scene where Rhett points out how foolish secession is. Also, when Ashley criticizes Scarlett for how she treats her workers, Scarlett Lampshades the hypocrisy of his not raising any similar objections to his family's use of slave labor. Ashley accurately reminds her that, although it's unfortunate that the slaves were technically registered as their property, they were generally not ill-treated.
• Faux Symbolism: Analysis of the book points out that the worsening war coincides with Melanie's worsening condition and Gerald's breakdown following Ellen's death represents those of the South who would never adjust to the changes that the war wrought. Most of all, Scarlett and Rhett's child, Bonnie represents their marriage—as such, her death represents its end.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Until the book no longer could be marketed due to the declaration of war in 1941, Gone With the Wind was a big bestseller in Nazi Germany. Bernhard Payr, a culture bureaucrat, praised that the book taught that losing a war was worse than the preceding horrors of war and how it established a clear racial hierarchy between the "master class" and the subservient "good blacks".
  • Currently, the book is very popular in North Korea, as described here. The film version is banned for the general public there, but the book is available legally and the film is watched by the country's elite. In particular, the government considers it to be "particularly useful for understanding how modern capitalism spread to all of the United States." Geez, does Margaret Mitchell have a gift for appealing to people in the worst countries or what?
  • Gone with the Wind was banned in the Soviet Union, but following Soviet collapse it has become extremely popular in The New Russia. The story proved very relatable for Russians who lived through the devastation wrought on their country during World War II, and the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent painful transition to capitalism, with mass pauperisation but also plentiful Rags to Riches stories, provided a historical backdrop similar enough to the Reconstruction-era South.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Rhett's personality change and complete breakdown following Bonnie's death can be doubly painful to watch if one recalls that Clark Gable himself was similarly devastated when his wife Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash just three years after the film's release. Between the funeral and Gable's next appearance in a film, he had lost 20 pounds. It was remarked by Esther Williams that Gable was never really the same after that. To twist the knife further, he only accepted to be in the film because the money would allow him to divorce his current wife and marry Lombard.
• Hollywood Homely: In the book, Melanie is described as very plain. Scarlett describes her thusly in the movie, but the effect is somewhat lost due to Melanie being played by Olivia de Havilland. It could be a reflection of Scarlett's own superficial views as well. Melanie notably wears very modest and plain dresses in contrast to Scarlett and the other ladies' elaborate finery. So Scarlett may see Melanie as plain for this reason and she could also be jealous because everyone loves kind-hearted Melanie.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Scarlett laments the fact that her post-baby waist is 20 inches, declaring herself to be "as big as Aunt Pittypat". Aside from 20 inches being almost impossibly slim, Scarlett looks nothing like the plump Aunt Pitty.
  • Obviously reflecting how that time favored wasp-waisted women, on the other hand, the book mentioned Scarlett being proud of having plump legs.
• It Was His Sled: The book was written in 1936. The movie came out in 1939. You should know how this story ends just by Pop-Cultural Osmosis. Not to mention Rhett's famous "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" line to Scarlett at the end, which pretty much spells out which way Rhett's relationship with Scarlett goes.
• Jerkass Woobie: Is Scarlett a philandering bitch with no real sense of human emotion or empathy who will use, abuse, and kill anyone who stands in her way? Hell yes. Is she more or less trained to be such as a byproduct of her own damaging environment, a woman pulverized by every single horrific fate the war and the New South dish out at her, and someone who ultimately suffers for every one of her mistakes, with several empty relationships, dead family and children, and the one person she truly loved leaving her? Hell to the yes.
  • Suellen; While she may have been bratty and petty, she is bullied relentlessly by her sister Scarlett- even though she just lost her mother and entire structure of life while she was extremely sick (the book even states that she simply wanted to be comforted and petted during that time). Then Scarlett marries Frank Kennedy (her fiance), which Melanie even justifies in her face while she is devastated.
  • India Wilkes may have been insensitive towards Scarlett, to the point of even telling her that she "deserved" to be assaulted. However, Scarlett stole her beau from her, and left her nothing more than an "old maid." And on top of that, she certainly isn't wrong about Scarlett being a hostile person, which Melanie refuses to believe, and even tells her (India) that she (Melanie) favors and views Scarlett more as a "sister," despite the fact that she and India are actually related (both as cousins and sisters in-law by marriage), and Melanie even breaks ties with her as well- all for speaking the truth about Scarlett.
  • Rhett may be far from being a sympathetic character, but it's really, really hard to not feel heartbroken for him when he loses his only child (Bonnie). It's very clear that he loves his daughter very much, and he can't even bring himself to have her "buried in the dark". Anyone who has lost a child can really feel for Rhett in that sense. Plus, prior to being an abusive jerk towards Scarlett, he gives her all the wealth and love that he can- only for her to (seemingly) cheat on him with Ashley. It certainly doesn't excuse his actions towards Scarlett, but it's understandable that he's very hurt by her actions.
• Les Yay: Melanie is very, very attached to Scarlett. Even her husband, who she takes the vow to honour and obey very seriously, will not get away with making Scarlett cry. She'll work until she faints if Scarlett orders her to pick cotton, will openly snap at those who she catches gossiping unkindly about Scarlett, and will brave social disapproval rather than cut ties with Scarlett. Part of all this is due to the fact that Scarlett helped save her and her son when she went in labour during the war, but even before all that, she was very admiring of Scarlett and genuinely happy to gain her as a sister-in-law.
  • In the movie, Melanie is very touchy-feely with Scarlett, even more so than with her own husband. While Ashley and her have a few moments of passionate hugs and kisses, Melanie seems to find a constant excuse to touch Scarlett, kissing and hugging her. In the scene where she and Scarlett read the list of those wounded and killed, she actually nuzzles into her side with her face.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn".
  • "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies."
  • To a lesser extent, "As God as my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"
  • Scarlett pops up in many a Resting Bitch Face meme.
• Mind Game Ship: Rhett/Scarlett comes across as this at times; Rhett is definitely manipulating her and toys with her emotions. Subverted in that she causes him significantly more angst than he does her, despite hardly manipulating him consciously at all.
• Moral Event Horizon: Those who dislike Rhett might feel he crosses this when (a) he rapes Scarlett, (b) he ditches her the morning after then shows up days later to taunt her about being with another woman and disappear again, or definitely (c) when he responds to the news of her pregnancy by asking who the father is and suggesting that she'd be happy to miscarry.
  • Scarlett herself, after Bonnie's death, when she relentlessly calls him a murderer. Couples have been known to say horrible things to each other after the death of a child, but that's beyond the pale.
  • India crosses this when she tells Scarlett that not only did she deserve what happened to her (the Attempted Rape), that "if there was any justice, you'd have gotten worse."
    • Or perhaps when she tells Melanie about seeing Ashley and Scarlett embrace, not caring that she's misinterpreted what she saw (to be fair, she doesn't realize this) or that she's going to hurt the brother and sister-in-law that she dearly loves, only relishing that she going to hurt and humiliate Scarlett.
• Narm: In the second half the sheer number of tragedies that happen to Scarlett one after the other - Scandalous gossip about her and Ashley, marital rape courtesy of Rhett, Rhett leaving her before returning, she has a miscarriage falling down the stairs, Bonnie dies in a riding accident, Melanie suddenly falls ill and dies, and Rhett finally breaks it off with her - and them happening so close together is bound to induce laughter.
  • The fact that both her dad and her daughter die the exact same way, a horse ride gone wrong, with the horse sniffing and nudging the former's dead body and the latter falling right off the horse, who didn't even jump.
• Narm Charm: The movie sometimes boils over with Narm thanks to the difference in acting styles between the thirties and the 21st century. Particularly all of Scarlett's over the top screams and when she whines: "Why do I have to pretend and pretend?"
• Not-So-Cheap Imitation: Gone With the Wind was published three years after Owen Davis' successful play Jezebel - a drama about a manipulative antebellum Southern belle who shocks society by appearing at an event in a vulgar red dress, becomes a public-emergency nurse, and spends the play motivated by a desire to win back a man who has rejected her even though she feels she has the right to him, only to realize at the end that it truly is his wife he loves.
• Once Original, Now Common: Much like The Wizard of Oz; what caused a lot of controversy in the day? The fact that Clark Gable said "Damn". At the time, this was unheard of. The set designs and acting can also be seen as quite cheesy and dated by today's standards, even if they were an all-around revolution back in 1939.
• Padding: The book seems to take the longest amount of time possible to get through anything.
• Questionable Casting:
  • No one expected a little known English actress would get the role every actress in Hollywood was dying to play. A critic even predicted that there would be rioting in the streets to protest the casting of Vivian Leigh. The Daughters of the Confederacy group ironically supported the casting when it was announced, though it was wedged in veiled "Better a Brit than a Yankee" response to the news.
  • Margaret Mitchell reportedly wanted Groucho Marx to play Rhett, probably because Rhett in the novel is more of a snarky smartass than the film's suave Rhett was. Of course, she was probably being sarcastic.
  • Leslie Howard is likewise seen as a weak link when it comes to Ashley. Not just for being a full twenty years older than the character is supposed to be, his attempt at a southern accent doesn't even stay consistent. Given his famous disdain for the story and character, it seems as though he just gave up halfway through.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • A young George Reeves appears early in the film as a potential suitor, though his hair is dyed red. Seen here◊.
  • The ill-fated Bonnie Blue Butler was played by Cammie King, who later became recognizable as the voice of Young Faline in Disney's Bambi, which came out 4 years after this movie.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • For some, the first part is so dramatic and action-packed - featuring the growing concerns of the war, and climaxing with Scarlett and Melanie's ride out of burning Atlanta all the way back to Tara - that part two just can't live up to it.
  • Also part of the reason all of the sequels have been doomed.
  • The success of that film overshadowed the rest of David O. Selznick's career. Later, Selznick was convinced that he had wasted his life trying to outdo it.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Rhett (with the exception of Bonnie's death). Yes, Scarlett is horrible to him. But​ most of that is provoked by him being horrible to her. He seems to get a sick thrill out of saying and doing things to make her upset or angry, then further taunting her by reacting with amusement when she loses her temper or not reacting at all. He forces himself on her, then ditches her the morning after then shows up days later to taunt her about being with another woman and disappear again, and he responds to the news of her pregnancy by asking who the father is and suggesting that she'd be happy to miscarry—one of several moments when he rejects her sincere efforts at reaching out to him. Overall, he really comes across like a jerk.
  • In a broader sense, basically every character either owns a slave or is completely fine with owning slaves, which is nowadays generally considered so monstrous as to be unspeakable. Then there's the classism - Scarlett and Mammy dismiss both white and black poor people as "trash" and are never called out on it.
• Values Dissonance: While the film isn't pro-Southern per se, there is a notable whitewashing of the horrors of slavery and racism that existed in the South.
• The Woobie: Charles Hamilton, who is taken advantage to the extreme. First Scarlett only marries him for her own petty reason (to make Ashley jealous), then shortly after he tragically dies of pneumonia before he even has a chance to fight. To make matters worse, his own wife doesn't even care that he's dead, and bitches and moans that "she's too young to be a widow!" and only his sister and aunt seem to be the only ones who truly grieve for him.
  • Carreen O'Hara, a sweet, gentle girl (and the most likeable one of the O'Hara sisters), who loses her mother and privileged lifestyle while she's extremely sick, only to be bullied relentlessly by her older sister Scarlett and forced to work while she's still very weak. Plus she loses Brent Tarleton (the "love of her life"), which she then never recovers from, and finds peace in a convent. Softened, somewhat in the sense that Scarlett actually favors her over Suellen, especially since she is the one who is more willing to help her sister pick cotton
  • Both Wade and Ella, considering that their mother despises them and abuses/neglects them, plus in the end they lose the only two people who ever really cared for them (Melanie and Rhett).
  • Prissy, who is continuously abused both verbally and physically by Scarlett merely out of annoyance-which the reader is apparently supposed to see as being justified, which sadly wasn't uncommon for most slaves during that time period.
  • Bonnie Blue Butler, an adorably sweet little girl, who tragically dies after innocently riding her beloved pony, and making it jump- causing her to break her neck. Her death has to be one of the most heartbreaking moments in both the book and movie, especially when Mammy informs Melanie that Rhett refuses to have her buried because she's "scared of the dark"
  • Beau Wilkes, who loses his mother at such a painfully young age, and is clearly devastated and confused when she is on her deathbed, even crying out; "Where is my mother going? Why can't I go with her?'', as his father carries him away.

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