Forget all the hoopla about true love and chivalry. The movie Gone with the Wind is about the end of the world and what comes after.Today, it's remembered primarily for its fabulous costumes and the angsty love triangle of Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler, and Ashley Wilkes. The romanticization of the antebellum South has not aged well. But take another look at that name, which offers a radically different way to think about the story.
Gone with the Wind is such a famous movie that it's hard to hear the title as a descriptive phrase. But here's the scrolling introduction:
"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 see of Knights and the Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it now only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind."
That's right: Gone with the Wind is about the apocalypse.
It’s also a rather feminist movie where a young woman who’s life has been devastated by war, shakes it off, squares her shoulders and gets down to making a life for herself, regardless of what she has to do to achieve it.
Definitely a movie before it’s time....