Gone with the Wind (1939)

Gone with the Wind mourns the slave-holding South like a lost paradise, and anyone pressing play today should know that going in. Tara is filmed as a golden dream, the Confederacy as a noble cause, and the enslaved characters are written as loyal and content, a fantasy the movie never once questions. It’s also one of the most ambitious things Hollywood ever built. Vivien Leigh makes Scarlett selfish, stubborn and impossible to look away from for almost four hours. Clark Gable plays Rhett with a grin that does half his acting. The burning of Atlanta still looks enormous, and the slow pull back over a rail yard crowded with wounded soldiers is a shot people will study forever. Hattie McDaniel became the first Black performer to win an Oscar for this film, then was seated apart from her castmates at the ceremony. The second half sinks into soap opera. A 6.8 because the filmmaking is towering and so is the blind spot. $4.63 says the intermission turns into a long, honest conversation on your couch.

What works: Vivien Leigh’s ferocious, maddening Scarlett, the sheer scale of the Technicolor production, and an Atlanta sequence that still looks enormous.

What doesn’t: It romanticizes slavery and the Confederacy as a lost golden age, and the second half drowns in repetitive marriage melodrama.

Who it’s for: Film history fans ready to watch a landmark with clear eyes and talk honestly about what it gets wrong.