Knights & their ladies fair
New Criterion,
by
Bruce Bawer
Original Article
Posted By: StormCnter,
8/22/2020 11:59:40 AM
Just after the opening credits of Gone with the Wind and before the start of the film proper is a title card that reads as follows (ellipses in the original):
There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South . . .
Here in this patrician world the Age of Chivalry 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 . . .
These are four very important sentences,
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Chuzzles 8/22/2020 12:35:34 PM (No. 517541)
One of the few novels that got onto the screen nearly word for word. Because Selznick knew what would happen if he didn't. That is how rabid the fans of the novel were then, and still are today. I do not appreciate when Hollywood tinkers with a successful book. I don't want to see the actor's ego on screen, I want to see the character brought to life. After all, that is why I bought the book, and paid for a ticket to see the movie.
That screen card he mentions always makes me a little wistful when I see it. Kind of sets the stage for the entire movie IMO. But this is why we have to reelect Trump.
17 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
earlybird 8/22/2020 12:39:16 PM (No. 517546)
This is a terrific article. I read Gone With the Wind in three days when I was just 14. We had a nice big armchair and I holed up there, could not put the book down. Never, in all my years, have I ever understood the characterization of the book a s glorifying the antebellum South or the Confederacy. ( I found that many years later in Mary Chesnut’s diary. Her husband became Jefferson Davis’s #2.) No. Opening with the most superficial of society, where a young woman’s waistline measurement was a matter of pride and gave her a competitive edge, the story soon turns to the upheaval of war. War is hell. And the South clearly loses. No glorification in the book. And certainly none in the movie where it is clear how much was lost.
That the insertion of dopey sentiment at the beginning of a movie would drive zealots over the edge is no surprise. We are surrounded by them. They cite Emma Lazarus’s poem as the rationale behind the Statue of Liberty. It wasn’t. It isn’t. But they are not deep thinkers. One wonders if they think at all. They shape everything they see to their own ideology, their own biases. And then they cancel our culture and hit the streets, cancelling our communities. Feral children with minds to match.
56 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
bldrrepub 8/22/2020 1:04:11 PM (No. 517570)
Well said, #2.
21 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Southron 8/22/2020 1:26:58 PM (No. 517603)
The book and the film have survived all attempts to diminish them.
12 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
czechlist 8/22/2020 2:05:47 PM (No. 517648)
Thx, StormCnter, I am glad you posted this article. Saw the flick but never read the book. Interesting to know there were those exclusions.
My early 70s college freshman English lit class spent a semester on Huckleberry Finn. I was 22 after 4 years in the Navy and the class was mostly 18-19 year old women, including a half dozen black, but no black men. I had never been in a class with black women and the difference in perspectives was enlightening. The discussions were animated and loud - but civil.
Unlikely to happen in today's college classrooms.
11 people like this.
Bawer describes the novel as: "a study of two strong-minded survivors set against the backdrop of America’s greatest social upheaval." I can't help but think that we are in the midst of America's second greatest social upheaval. And I hope America survives in a recognizable form.
19 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
earlybird 8/22/2020 2:14:48 PM (No. 517655)
I strongly urge anyone who hasn’t read this book to do so. It is far, far more than a novel.
18 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Timber Queen 8/22/2020 2:34:03 PM (No. 517668)
Wonderful! This is the best essay on Gone With The Wind I have ever read. It explores all of the aspects of the novel that I have found compelling since seeing the movie and reading the book when I was 14. My parents took me to the Carthay Circle theater in Hollywood. GWTW was the last movie they were showing before tearing down the beautiful art decco theater, where the LA premier was held. The lobby was full of props from the movie in glass display cases. I still remember seeing the check Scarlett wrote to pay the taxes on Tara.
I immediately bought a paperback copy and read it in just a few days. That Christmas my mother gave me a hardback that I read twice a year, summer and Christmas, through my college years until it fell apart and is still on my bookshelf. My mother replaced it with a 50th anniversary boxed edition in 1986. A treasure with an inscription in her handwriting. I still read it every year or so.
I always gave the movie the benefit of the doubt because of the complexity of the novel, but this essay gave me a new insight into the opening card comments. They do set up the audience to view the movie absent the crux of the story; Scarlett was a successful women despite the social constraints of her time while facing a new world for which she was unprepared. So was Margaret Mitchell whose biography is also a good read. I love Scarlett for the same reasons Melanie loved her; passion, bravery and a self assurance that would accept no defeat. There's a little bit of Scarlett in every Melanie. Perhaps that is why Scarlett captures the imagination.
16 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Rather Read 8/22/2020 2:37:09 PM (No. 517671)
This is an excellent article and it shows how complex the book is. The movie is good, but the book is excellent. Mr. Bawer is the first person to mention how Mitchell conveys the subtleties of the white society too. My own family back then were Crackers - small farmers who never owned slaves. Most of the south were of this group.
14 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
LonestarM3 8/22/2020 2:39:08 PM (No. 517673)
The book burning, founding father defiling, "woke" mentality is a text book example of the political definition of the term "Presentism" - i.e., judging past leaders for failure to conform to politically correct social norms of todays social justice warriors.
Even worse, the current crop of "fundamental transformers" cheering on the anarchist terrorists as they attempt to burn, pillage and murder are abysmally ignorant of the actual social norms in the past.
They believe that Washington and Jefferson, both slaveowners at the time, supported the institution of slavery. Both opposed it, Jefferson quite actively, but were unable to do much in their day.
They trashed the statue of Fredrick Douglas, the ex-slave who was the single greatest advocate for abolition and was personally an influence upon Pres. Abraham Lincoln regarding the formation of black regiments in the Union Army and possibly the Emancipation Proclamation. He definitely influenced Lincoln's policy of eventually commissioning approximately 100 black officers.
They trashed the monument to the 54th Massachusetts black regiment (subject of the movie "Glory") as well as that of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, the units white commander, who was killed going over the southern rampart in the regiment's most famous battle. They also trashed the monuments or statues of numerous other heroes who fought and died for the cause todays thugs are supposedly rioting for.
The Marxist/Communist term for citizens of a yet free country who advocate for socialism, originally "useful innocents" and later "useful idiots," exactly describes those who will be voting for the Biden-Harris ticket in November.
21 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
StormCnter 8/22/2020 4:18:15 PM (No. 517731)
Any one who enjoyed Gone With the Wind, book or film, might also learn a few things from Richard Harwell's 'Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" Letters 1936-1949'. The writer fought hard to protect the spirit of her novel against Hollywood's efforts to change things.
7 people like this.
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