Gone with the Wind

“Gone With the Wind,” the quintessential Hollywood movie, has long deserved to be rescued from critical disdain and given its correct place among American pop masterpieces, like “The Godfather” and “On the Waterfront” and “E.T.,” that enlighten as much as they entertain. Molly Haskell provides that defense in “Frankly, My Dear: ‘Gone With the Wind’ Revisited,” an earnest work of moviegoer remembrance that’s also affectionate scholarship. Haskell’s argument is mounted on feminist principles that at first glance seem antithetical to a film widely regarded as prefeminist fluff. She contends that “themes centering on women” are “always an inferior subject matter to socially conscious critics of literature and film.” After 70 years of “GWTW” bashing, a creditable critic finally says, “Not so fast!”
FRANKLY, MY DEAR
“Gone With the Wind” Revisited
By Molly Haskell
Related
The Times's Original Review of the Movie 'Gone With the Wind' (December 20, 1939)
  Since Haskell introduced one of the earliest versions of feminist-conscious film criticism in “From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies” (1974), feminist criticism hasn’t been very evident in the mainstream media. Haskell gave up regular reviewing in the early ’90s, leaving criticism that seriously examined the big-screen image of women and the popular representation of female social roles to go underground — into academic studies where abstruse, tenure-seeking jargon is used to rebuff popular taste. That makes “Frankly, My Dear” all the more remarkable. It’s Haskell’s feminist perspective that provides insight into a movie most academics won’t touch and current critics dismiss. She disentangles the film’s qualities from the confounding issues of misogyny, racism and intellectual snobbery.
Confronting the legendary headstrong heroine Scarlett O’Hara, Haskell explores the power she exerts on the romantic and political imagination — first as a creation in Margaret Mitchell’s... [continues]

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