Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind (1939) is a four hour epic of the American Civil War and its aftermath, and adjusted for inflation it remains the highest grossing film ever made. Scarlett O'Hara is the daughter of a Georgia plantation. The war takes everything: the house, the order, the class. She survives, and changes herself in the process. Her relationship with Rhett Butler is made and unmade throughout. The production is as tangled as the film. Three directors worked on it; George Cukor was fired, Victor Fleming took the credit, and Sam Wood filled the gap. The burning of Atlanta was the first scene shot. It was filmed so early that Scarlett had not yet been cast; the figures on the cart are doubles, not the stars. The burning buildings were old sets being cleared to make room for new ones, and the structure collapsing in the flames is the gate from the 1933 King Kong. Hattie McDaniel became the first Black person to win an Oscar for this film. She could not attend the Atlanta premiere because of segregation laws, and at the ceremony she was seated at a separate table at the back of the room. The film's account of the Civil War and of slavery is seriously contested now, criticised for perpetuating the lost cause myth. It runs 238 minutes, with an interval. Good for: classic Hollywood, epic, and film history. Less good for: it is very long, and it romanticises slavery in a way you need to watch knowingly.