The Great Debaters

“The Great Debaters,” released in 2007, is about an underdog debate team that wins a national championship, and some critics have complained that it follows the formula of all sports movies by leading up, through great difficulty, to a victory at the end. And what do you know, it does. How many sports movies, or movies about underdogs competing in any way, have you seen that end in a loss? It is human nature to seek inspiration in victory, and this is a film that is insisting and inspiring and re-creates the stories of a remarkable team and their coach.

The team is from a small college in Marshall, Texas, Wiley College, a black organization in the Jim Crow South of the 1930s. The school’s English professor, Melvin Tolson, played by Denzel Washington, is a taskmaster who demands really high from his debate team, but the movie is about more than that, and in ways that do not follow the traditional formulas.

For instance, there are Tolson’s secret lives. Wearing overalls and work boots, he ventures out in disguise as an organizer for a national sharecropper’s union. He’s a dangerous radical, local whites believe: probably a communist. But he’s organizing poor whites and blacks, whose enslavement is equal.

He keeps his politics out of the classroom, however, where he hides a different kind of secret: He is one of America’s leading poets. Although the move barely goes into detail on it, Tolson published long poems in such magazines as the Atlantic Monthly and in 1947 he was actually named poet laureate of Liberia. It’s ironic that his role as the coach for this debate team would win him greater fame today.

He holds difficult auditions and selects four team members: Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), who drinks and flirts with women; Hamilton Burgess (Jermaine Williams), a superb debater; James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), a bright 14-year-old who is their researcher; and Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), the substitute, and the only female debater they’ve heard of. Tolson drills them, disciplines them, counsels them and leads them to a string of victories that finishes a victory of Harvard, the national champion.

We get a good sense of the livelihood black community that has made these students, in particular James Farmer Sr., played by the beloved Forest Whitaker, a preacher. (Denzel Whitaker, who plays the son, is not related to Forest Whitaker, and not named after Denzel Washington). James Jr. would go on to find the Congress of Racial Equality.

Tolson drives his team on long road trips to out-of-town debates, and one night traveling late, they have a really emotional experience in the film: They run into a place where a white mob has just lynched a black man and set his body on fire. They barely escape by the skin of their teeth. And daily life for them is full with racist danger; especially for Tolson, who has been singled out by the local sheriff, played by John Heard, as a rabble-rouser. These experiences inform their debates as much as formal research.

The movie is not really about how this team defeats the national champions. It is more about how its members, its coach, its school and community believe that an education is their best way out of the mess of racism and discrimination. They would never think that in the future, serious black students would be criticized by jealous colleagues for “acting white.” They’re black, proud, single-minded, focused, and they express all of this really dramatically in their debating.

The debates themselves have one habit: The Wiley team somehow draws the “good” side of every question. Since debaters are supposed to defend whatever position they are fighting, whatever position they draw, it might have been interesting to see them defend something they disbelieve, even hate. The late Roger Ebert admits, “Still, I suppose I understand why that isn’t don here; it would have interrupted the flow. And the blow becomes a mighty flood in a powerful and impassioned story.” This is one of 2007’s best films.

Here’s a special note: In fact, the real Wiley team did beat the national champions, but from USC, not Harvard. Co-writer Robert Eisele explains, “In that era, there was much at stake when a black college debated any white school, particularly one with the stature of Harvard. We used Harvard to demonstrate the heights they achieved.”

In the end, you should definitely check this movie out. It suits for this month, and is very inspirational. I saw this last spring semester in a Rhetoric class that I was taking, which is odd, but we spend an entire week watching this movie, and it was worth it. If you get the chance to watch this, do so, I think you’ll love it.

Thank you for joining in on my “Black History Month Movie Reviews.” Stay tuned for more of my movie reviews coming soon. I’ll catch you later.

Coach Carter

Does anybody remember back in 2005 when Samuel L. Jackson made it into the news by refusing to co-star with rapper 50 Cent in a movie based on the rapper’s life? Not only did he refuse, but he refused publicly, even though the film was directed by Jim Sheridan, a six-time Oscar nominee. A clue to what Jackson was thinking could be found in the 2005 Basketball movie, “Coach Carter,” based on the true story of a California high school basketball coach who put grades above sports, and another one of my favorite sports movies. Like Bill Cosby, Jackson is arguing against the anti-intellectual message that young black males are successful in the world of rap and sports and not in school.

However, there is another reason why Jackson refused: He said he thought Sheridan wanted him to “lend legitimacy” to 50 Cent’s acting debut. He might have something there. Jackson has an authority on the screen. He embodies a character with such force, controlling attention and can bring class to a movie. He said that “he might be interested in working with 50 Cent after the rapper makes another five movies or so, and earns his chops” (Ebert).

This reason might not be fair. Look at the work Ice Cube did in his first movie, “Boyz N the Hood,” which was also the beginning of a successful career as an actor for Ice Cube. Or look at what the late Tupac Shakur showed on screen, especially in his last movie, “Gridlock’d,” holding his own with Tim Roth. Maybe 50 Cent has what he needs to be an actor, or maybe he doesn’t. Jackson’s decision may have more to do with the basic values of the rapper’s life. He may not consider 50 Cent’s career to be such a role model, because for those who have been following his career, he’s had a lot of violent moments.

Role models are what “Coach Carter” is all about. Jackson plays Ken Carter, who began as a sports star at Richmond High School in California, setting the records that still stand, and then was successful when he was in the military and as a small businessman. He’s asked to take over as basketball coach, which is an unpaid volunteer position. The former coach, played by Mel Winkler, tells Carter, “I can’t get them to show up for school.” That is going to change now that Coach Ken Carter is taking over the position as Basketball coach.

The movie was directed by Thomas Carter, and no, he’s not related to Ken Carter. Roger Ebert mentions, “It follows long-established genre patterns.” Not only is this a sports movie with the usual big games and important shots, but also a coach movie, with the coach giving inspirational speeches in the locker room and difficult moral decisions. There are certain similarities with “Friday Night Lights,” although there it’s the movie itself, and not the coach, that emphasizes the uselessness of high school stars planning on going forward to professional sports as their future career.

I never saw “Friday Night Lights,” but Ebert said, “Certainly both movies give full weight to public opinion in the communities where they're set -- places where the public's interest in secondary education seems entirely focused on sports, where coaches are more important than teachers, where scores are more important than grades.”

Coach Carter wants to change that. He walks into the gymnasium that is filled with loud, arrogant, disrespectful students, and demands their attention with the fierceness of his attitude. He makes rules. He tells the students to sign a contract that says they agree to maintain a certain grade-point average in order to stay on the team. He deals with the usual personal problems. A star player named Kenyon Stone, played by Ron Brown, has a pregnant girlfriend named Kyra, played by R&B singer Ashanti in her acting debut, and she sees a threat to her future in Carter trying to get his team into college.

Ken Carter’s most dramatic decision, which was on the news back in 1999, was to lock the gymnasium, forfeit games and jeopardize the team’s title chances after some of his players did not follow the rules on the contract. Obviously, the community went ballistic that a coach would place grades higher than winning games. For them, the future for these student athletes is in the NBA, not education.

Given the odds against these students making it into the NBA, this reason, as Ebert put it, “is like considering the lottery a better bet than working for a living.”

Jackson has the usual big speeches that all coaches do in every sports movie, and really does deliver them big time. His passion makes familiar scenes look like we are seeing them for the first time. “I see a system that’s designed for you to fail,” he tells his team, pointing out that young black men are 80 percent more likely to go to prison than college. Before the credits roll, the movie tells the viewers that six of the team members did go on to college, five with scholarships. Lives, not games, were won.

This movie, hands down, deserves a solid 10+. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you are missing out. If you want to make it into the world of professional sports, this movie teaches you that you need to set your priorities. Education always comes first.

I hope you have liked this review. Stay tuned next week for the finale of the “Black History Month Movie Reviews.”

Lincoln

Happy President’s Day everyone! Today, I would like to honor my personal favorite president, Abraham Lincoln. And what better way to do that then by taking a look at Steven Spielberg’s 2012 historically accurate masterpiece, “Lincoln.”

The late Roger Ebert said, “I've rarely been more aware than during Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" that Abraham Lincoln was a plain-spoken, practical, down-to-earth man from the farmlands of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. He had less than a year of formal education and taught himself through his hungry reading of great books. I still recall from a childhood book the image of him taking a piece of charcoal and working out mathematics by writing on the back of a shovel.”

Lincoln lacked social polish but he had a vast amount of knowledge on human nature and was smart in that area. The trademark of this great President, played so powerfully by the great Daniel Day-Lewis, is calm self-confidence, patience and an eagerness to play politics in a realistic way. The film looks at the final months of Lincoln’s life, including the passage of the 13^th Amendment that ended slavery, the surrender of the Confederacy and his assassination. Rarely has a film focused really carefully to the details on the politics.

Lincoln believed that slavery was morally wrong, but he also thought the 13^th Amendment was an effort in cutting away the financial establishments of the Confederacy. In this film, the passage from the 13^th Amendment is guided by William Seward, played by David Strathairn, his secretary of state, and by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones, the most powerful abolitionist in the House. Any performance in this movie does not depend on self-conscious histrionics. Particularly, Jones plays a crafty weirdo with some secret hiding areas in his heart.

The capital city of Washington is portrayed in this film as a vicious gathering of politicians on the make. The images by Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg’s frequent cinematographer, use earth tones and muted indoor lighting. Ebert mentioned, “The White House is less a temple of state than a gathering place for wheelers and dealers. This ambience reflects the descriptions in Gore Vidal's historical novel "Lincoln," although the political and personal details in Tony Kushner's concise, revealing dialogue is based on "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book is well-titled.” The film is not about an icon of history, but about a President who was disrespected by some of his political opponents as (Ebert puts it) “just a hayseed from the backwoods.”

Ebert says, “Lincoln is not above political vote buying. He offers jobs, promotions, titles and pork barrel spending.” He isn’t even slightly unenthusiastic to spend the low-handed strategies of his chief negotiators (Tim Blake Nelson, James Spader, and John Hawkes). That’s how the game is played, and indeed we may be reminded of the arm-bending used to pass the civil rights legislation by Lyndon B. Johnson, the subject of another biography by Goodwin.

Daniel Day-Lewis, who has a fix on an Oscar nomination, changes Lincoln. He is soft-spoken, a little bent, tired after the years of war, concerned about having anymore soldiers die. He communicates through stories and tales. At his side is his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, played by the very lovely Sally Field (typically sturdy and spunky), who is sometimes seen as a social climber but here is focused as wife and mother. She has already lost one son in the war and is afraid of losing another. Their other son, Robert Todd Lincoln, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, refuses the benefits of the family.

There are some battlefields in “Lincoln” but the only battle scene is at the opening, when the words of the Gettysburg Address are spoken with the greatest possible impact, and not by Lincoln. Kushner also smoothly merges the wording of the 13^th Amendment into the film without making it sound like a mandatory history lesson.

The film ends soon after Lincoln’s assassination. I would assume that audiences would want that in the movie. There is an earlier shot, when it could have ended, of President Lincoln walking away from the camera after his amendment had been passed. The rest belongs to history.

In the end, go see the movie, it’s a fantastic movie. You will love Spielberg for getting this film very accurate, and it’s appropriate for today. I hope you enjoyed my review and stay tuned for this Friday for the third entry of my “Black History Month Movie Reviews.”

Ray

Ray Charles became blind when he was 9 (C.J. Sanders), two years after he saw his little brother (Terrone Bell) drown. In a memory that has haunted him since, he stood at the exact same spot while seeing with his very eyes his little brother drown in the bath basin. Why didn’t Ray try to save him? The same reason why all 7-year-olds don’t act quickly: Because they are new to the skills in life and can be shocked emotionally. No one seeing that part in “Ray,” Taylor Hackford’s 2004 musical biography, would think to blame the boy, but he never forgives himself.

If he had already lost his ability to see, he would not blame himself for the death and would not be feeling guilty forever that, the movie argues, is part of the reason for his drug addiction. Would he also have not been driven to become the most-well known artist that he became? Who can say? In that matter, what role did his blindness play? Did it make him so alive to sound like a better musician? Certainly he was so adapted to the world around him that he never had to use a cane or a dog; for Charles blindness was more of a characteristic than a handicap.

Jamie Foxx hints the complexities of Ray Charles in a great, exuberant performance. He doesn’t do the singing – that is all done by the late Ray Charles himself on the soundtrack - but what would be the point? Ray Charles was heavily involved with this movie for years, until he had passed away that year in June, and the film had access to his records, so they would obviously use them, because nobody could sing like Ray Charles.

What Foxx does correctly was the physical Ray Charles, and what an extrovert he was. The late Roger Ebert says, “Not for Ray the hesitant blind man of cliche feeling his way, afraid of the wrong step. In the movie and in life, he was adamantly present in body as well as spirit, filling a room, physically dominant, interlaced with other people.” In case you’re wondering, he was an eccentric in his mannerisms, especially when he was playing the keyboard; Ebert commented, “I can imagine a performance in which Ray Charles would come across like a manic clown.” But Foxx really gets the Ray’s body language as a type of choreography, in which he was conducting his music with himself, instead of doing it with a baton. Ebert says, “Foxx so accurately reflects my own images and memories of Charles that I abandoned thoughts of how much "like" Charles he was and just accepted him as Charles, and got on with the story.”

The movie puts Ray at the center of music movement, postwar. After an early career where he seemed to sound like Nat “King” Cole, he loosened up, found himself, and discovered a combination of gospel music from his childhood and the rhythm & blues from his teenage years and his first professional gigs. The result was, essentially, the start for soul music, in his early music like “I Got a Woman.”

The movie shows that Ray found the sound in Seattle, which is where he goes after he leaves him hometown of Georgia. Before and later, it flashes back to key scenes involving his mother Aretha, played by Sharon Warren, who taught him not to be intimidated by his blindness, to dream big, to demand that he gets the best. She had no education and had very little money, but insisted that he attend the school for the blind, which gave him his destination. He goes to Seattle after hearing about the club scene, but why does he go there instead of New York, New Orleans, Kansas City or Chicago? Definitely that time when he met Seattle teenager Quincy Jones, played by Larenz Tate, was one of the crucial life events to Ray (similarly to his friendship with the emcee Oberon, played by Warwick Davis, who is the person who got Ray addicted to marijuana).

The movie follows Ray from his birth in 1930 until 1966, when he finally comes over his heroin addiction and his story becomes happier but also perhaps less dramatic. By that time he had invented Gospel, had moved into mainstream with full orchestration, had moved out of mainstream into country music (“then anathema to a black musician,” to quote Ebert) and had, in 1961, by refusing to play a segregated concert in Georgia, putting a nail in the corpse of Jim Crow in the entertainment industry.

Ebert says, “In an industry that exploits many performers, he took canny charge of his career, cold-bloodedly leaving his longtime supporters at Atlantic Records to sign with ABC Paramount and gain control of his catalog. (It's worth noting that the white Atlantic owners Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler are portrayed positively, in a genre that usually shows music execs as bloodsuckers.)” Ray also had many children than the movie could tell its viewers, with more women than the movie has time for, and yet he found the lifelong support and love of his wife, Della Bea Robinson, played by Kerry Washington.

The film is two and a half hours long – not too long for the richness in the story – but to cover the years between 1966 up to the time of his death in 2004 would have required more speed and seeming summary than Hackford and his writer, James L. White, are willing to settle for. When we leave him, Ray is safely on the track to his glory years, although there is a brief scene in 1979 where he receives an apology from his hometown of Georgia over the concert incident, and “Georgia on My Mind” is named after as the state song.

Ray’s addiction was not only in drugs, but he was a womanizer as well. He only beat his drug addiction, but “Ray” is perceptive and not unsympathetic in dealing with his wandering ways. Of the women we see on screen, the most important one is Della Bea, played by Washington as Ebert put it, “a paragon of insight, acceptance and a certain resignation.” When one of Ray’s women dies, she asks him, “What about our baby?” “You knew?” says Charles. She knew everything.

His two essential affairs are with blues singer Ann Fisher (Aunjanue Ellis) and a member of his backup group, the Raelettes, Margie Hendricks (Regina King). Ebert comments, “Who knows what the reality was, but in the film we get the sense that Charles was honest, after his fashion, about his womanizing, and his women understood him, forgave him, accepted him and were essential to him.” Not that he was an easy man to get along with during the years he was heavily into marijuana, and not that they were saints, but that, all in all, whatever it was, it worked. “On the road,” says Margie, in a line that says more than it needs to, “I’m Mrs. Ray Charles.”

The movie would be worth seeing simply for the sound of the music and Jamie Foxx’s performance. Just that it looks deeper and gives us a sense of a man himself is what makes this film so special. Yes, there are moments when an incident in Ray’s life instantly inspires a song (Ebert says, “I doubt "What'd I Say?" translated quite so instantly from life to music”). But Taylor Hackford brings quick sympathy to Ray as a performer and a man, and people who are fans of his work know that he directed “Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll,” a documentary about Chuck Berry; a performer whose onstage and offstage moves more than bracing Hackford for this film. Ray Charles was quite a man; this movie not only knows it, but understands it.

Go see this movie if you haven’t because you are missing out. If you were a fan of Ray Charles’s music, or love Jamie Foxx, then this is the movie for you.

Thank you for joining in on my second entry of my “Black History month movie reviews.” Stay tuned for Monday when I do a President’s Day film review.

Moulin Rouge!

Well, it's Valentine's Day again. That means I have to review another movie that I hate but everyone else seems to love. Today I will look at the 2001 musical, "Moulin Rouge!" Have I ever reviewed a musical before? I remember I did review "The Prince of Egypt," which is a children's animated musical, but I guess that will count. Anyway, before everyone starts sending their hate mail to not bash on "Moulin Rouge!" please hear me out first.

Goodness do I hate this movie. It's right up there with "Titanic" in my list of least favorite movies. You know those films that think they are saying something new and innovative but it has been said countless times before and in better ways? This is one of those movies. The message is: "Follow your heart and be in love." However, they think by putting together all of these huge effects, musical numbers and recycling songs that we have heard covers for so many times before sung badly is somehow making this new. IT'S NOT!!!!!

Much like with James Cameron's highest grossing movie of all time, "Avatar," I really love the idea behind the movie's style and I love the sets. Doug Walker thought he was going to love this movie, thinking that it was going to be a live-action music video with this really good story because "the director, Baz Luhrmann, couldn't have put all this money and artistic direction" into a nonsensical version of "Titanic." That's "exactly" what this movie is, "Titanic." For as much as I hate "Titanic," I will say that it had something better to offer the viewers than "Moulin Rouge!" because that had a true story about the real-life sinking of the RMS Titanic. Also, I give Cameron credit for putting a little bit of history in "Titanic," even though some of it was not accurate, but what movie that has been about a historic story has been 100% accurate?

Before this movie came out, movie musicals were not seen as much. Even today, they rarely are released. "Moulin Rouge!" is the first musical to have a huge budget behind it to come out in years. You want to know the downside of this: NO ORIGINAL SONGS!! Actually, they have had one or two original songs, if I remember correctly. Mainly the soundtrack was songs that we have heard covers to before in something like "American Idol" or any of those talent shows. Maybe that was the style this movie was going for. It was showing the viewers the whole array of music in this one place the movie is taking place. I don't think that works effectively though. For this to be the first musical to come out in years and have no original songs would be a huge slap in the face for people who are fans of musicals and were looking forward to something new and original. A lot of them were redone and sung really badly. Very few actually worked. I do understand that was the movie's style and I like that this movie started up movie musicals again.

Another problem I have with this movie, besides it being "Titanic" all over again, is the basic story. The villain, played by Richard Roxburgh, has no motivation but to be a jerk and get what he wants because that's what he is used to is boring. Christian, played by Ewan McGregor, is the protagonist who wants to learn about love but has never been in love, so he wants to explore about it, and he’s boring. Satine, played by Nicole Kidman, is someone who wants to be an actress because that's her biggest desire. When Harold Zidler, played by Jim Broadbent, takes her out during her big performance and says to her, "And then you will become..." and Satine replies, "A real actress." My reply to this is, "Satine, you're flying in the air, doing somersaults, flips, you're singing, and your fans are praising you as a goddess. What more do you want!? You have the whole world at your fingertips and you want to be a real actress!?" So she's boring.

When you find out that she has tuberculosis, because in the beginning she is coughing and falls off the gymnastics prop, and we think that she is dead. DougWalker says that part is a bad version of "La bohème." When Satine is told that the Duke wants Christian dead, SHE DOESN'T TELL HIM!! Why doesn't she tell the Duke that she has tuberculosis, which will make him break up with her? Why doesn't she tell Christian to pull a "Romeo & Juliet," and just run out of town? Instead, she says to him, "I can't see you anymore." I hate those parts in any romance because the couple goes off and pout and brood and think they aren't in love with one another because of some misunderstanding and they think they hate each other. How is this resolved? By playing a pop song, of course! THIS IS BORING! WE KNOW THEY ARE GOING TO GET BACK TOGETHER!!! STOP WASTING OUR TIME!!! For the style and money that was put into this movie, it was wasting our time, but from what I think, it looks like it's going to give us something new. However, in terms of character, story, or anything else; it's not giving us anything new. Right down to the music, it's recycled. You could say that this is literally the exact same music.

I couldn't get into this style because the editing was too fast. These are massive, big sets. I want to see every single one of them! You're not because different characters come up in front of the camera and does something the entire run time of this movie. Why are you going to spend all this money on costumes and sets if you're not going to let us see them? You're instead going to cut away or move the camera around!

Doug Walker says that the pretentiousness is what gets to him the most, and I would agree with him on that. Have you counted how many times they use "love" in this movie? I think this movie wins the award for using "love" the most in movie history. Unbelievable!

The characters all are children, maybe written for children. The movie thinks it's the biggest thing! It thinks it says, "All you need is love." That is not a very interesting message. Even if you do believe that message, there's much more than that. THERE'S LIFE! THAT GETS IN THE WAY!!! Maybe this movie was trying to show that, but what they were showing that gets in the way isn't life, it was planned movie nonsense with the villain, the comedic misunderstanding, and so on. That's movie folks, not life. The movie must have thought that life is getting in the way of love, but love will shine through because it conquers all, but it simply wasn't. I agree with Doug Walker when he says that it was "very contrived and forced." The movie thought it was giving us something grand and new and big, but gave us style over substance. Maybe the movie was thinking it wasn't that. What I mean is that movie sort of becomes its own entity and art form. I think the movie was trying to get across something really big and groundbreaking, but it's just nonsense that we have seen so many times before! I was annoyed the entire time I was watching this.

People seem to really love this one and really get into the love story, but I don't understand it. However, people who say they love this movie usually say that they love the art direction and style of the movie, similar to "Avatar," which people say they only like that for the look of the movie. To tell you the truth, I can understand and respect that. If you like the message in this movie, then live that life. Live with the whole "love conquers all" message because it's a wonderful thought for children. I can't do that because it doesn't work for me, personally.

Remember, if you like this movie, I will not judge you. I won't act like I know what the director was thinking because I have no idea what any director thinks when they make a movie. We all have movies that we hate but everyone loves and vice versa. Just remember it's all about taste, not that it makes you a good or bad person.

Happy Valentine's Day to all the couples in the world, but for single people, like myself, I say Happy Single Awareness Day. Stay tuned tomorrow for the second entry in my "Black History Month Movie Reviews."

Gone with the Wind

Well, it’s February again. You know what that means? It’s time for Black History Month again. Don’t complain! You have to learn about History. Let’s begin with today’s review.

The classic 1939 epic, “Gone with the Wind” goes through the Old South, the Civil War and Reconstruction. The story of a selfish, stubborn Southern belle who gets her strength from the land, it’s a splendid costume drama and an elaborately entertaining movie.

By today’s standards, “Gone with the Wind” occasionally spaces into absolute melodrama and its often-stereotypical 1939 portrayal of black people annoy modern viewers. Despite the flaws of its time, this star-studded, big-budget spectacular is a classic of American moviemaking, and not to be looked over.

The film is quite faithful to the Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling novel, and follows the journey of Scarlett O’Hara, played by Vivien Leigh in her first role. Gorgeously beautiful and completely self-absorbed, Scarlett is the daughter of plantation owner Gerald O’Hara, played by Thomas Mitchell, and secretly in love with neighboring plantation owner Ashley Wilkes, played by Leslie Howard. Meanwhile, Ashley is enamored by his cousin, Melanie, played by Olivia De Havilland.

The movie opens with an extravagant description of the Old South as the place where “gallantry took its last bow,” and “a dream remembered, a civilization gone with the wind.” On the night of the Civil War, the wealthy families gather for a party at the Wilkes’ plantation, Seven Oaks, where Scarlett first sees Rhett Butler, played by the great Clark Gable. This confident and slightly disreputable gentleman is clearly interested in the pampered southern belle – and the only man who understands the North will overpower the South in a future conflict. And at that same night, the war is declared.

Rejected by Ashley, Scarlett hastily marries Melanie’s brother Charles, played by Rand Brooks, tying the two families together before Charles goes off to the war (where he quickly dies of pneumonia).

We follow the strong Scarlett through the terrors of the war, her reluctant protection of Melanie, the fall of Atlanta, the ruin of Tara and the near-salvation. Then it’s another marriage and her courageous and disgraceful behavior during the Reconstruction. She relies on Rhett the entire time – but continues to reject him and stubbornly stays attached to her original thinking that she loves Ashley.

Vivien Leigh didn’t get the role until after the filming had begun. In fact, she signed on during the day the famous Atlanta burning was filmed; using an actual fire of old sets in the studios back lots. Scarlett had a stunt double during those fire scenes.  Leigh was an excellent choice for this selfish, scheming Scarlett, a delicate beauty with a will of iron. She’s difficult to love, but must be admired.

Gable is irresistible as the scrape with a heart of gold and his own excellent code of principle. His confidence and easy masculinity so far outdo the pale appeals of Ashley Wilkes that Scarlett’s continued attachment damages innocence. You have to love him when Scarlett asks him, "But Rhett, where will I go? What will I do?" and he replies with the famous line, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a darn." Yes, I used a replacement word, so what?

De Havilland is strong as the almost too-good Melanie, and Howard is just the sort of pathetic man as Ashley. Hattie McDaniel almost walks away with the movie as Mammy, the family servant who sees through Scarlett’s methods and has more life and enthusiasm in her little fingers like half of the polite household. She was the first African American nominated for an Oscar, and the first to win one, as Best Supporting Actress. By contrast, Butterfly McQueen’s squeaky-voiced turn as the simple-minded Prissy has become the subject of satire, especially her “I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies” line.

With more than 50 speaking roles, keeping all of the characters straight is a difficult task, but the huge cast adds to the capacity of the story. The abundant score by Max Steiner, detailed sets, spectacular costumes, superb art direction, and gorgeous Technicolor cinematography by Ernest Haller round out the clear of this epic film.

Years in the making, at $4 million it was one of the most expensive films ever made, and it held the record as highest-grossing movie for many years. Although the record has since been beaten, “Gone with the Wind” is still the box office winner for most theater tickets sold.

It won the Best Picture Oscar in one of the most artistically viable years ever seen in Hollywood. Other movies that came out in 1939 included “Ninotchka,” “Stagecoach,” Wuthering Heights,” and “Goodbye Mr. Chips.” Amazingly, the former stunt man who directed “Gone with the Wind,” Victor Fleming, is also credited with another classic that came out in 1939, “The Wizard of Oz.”

Final verdict: it’s a little overblown, with attitudes that are more than a little dated, yet “Gone with the Wind” is undeniably famous. Mostly for the better, and sometimes for the worse, this epic movie is a uniquely American story.

That's the first review for Black History Month. Stay tuned next week for two posts: one on another Valentine's Day movie that I hate and the usual Black History Month review.