Gone With the Wind - Historical?

[SLD]

It's fashionable to critique GWTW as unhistorical and a naive and sentimental view of the past. But I found it recently on Amazon Prime and watched it through for the first time since I was a child.

I was actually stunned in many ways it was in fact historically accurate. Yes it glossed over slavery as benign, but it also showed the war in gritty reality in ways that a lot more modern movies have glossed over.

This picture is one of the more iconic scenes, but I suspect highly realistic.



I can really imagine that the wounded from the battlefields surrounding Atlanta would indeed have piled up in the center, exposed to the elements for as far as the eye could see. The stench must have been overwhelming. No wonder the characters avoid going down there.

There are other minor historical references that were true as well, such as there being only one route out of Atlanta as the Confederate Army pulled out, and the fire in ammunition cars, which is exactly what Hood ordered as he left.

While the movie can be rather maudlin, that's what moviegoers of the 30's expected. It seems to go out of its way to portray the horrors of the war on southern families, without ever showing any real battle scenes. Many other civil war epics tend to gloss over these aspects. Gettysburg with Lee Daniels is an enjoyable movie in many respects, but it glosses over a lot of things and ignores some nasty political issues - like the scene with the confederate prisoner. It also took serious liberties with some basic facts of that battle.

GWTW, to me, didn't pull punches about the horrors of the war. And in the beginning I noticed that the southerners admit that the war was to preserve slavery. I also noticed it wasn't shy about exposing southern naivety in starting the war.

All in all, despite its glaring error on slavery, I think it may deserve some very high marks for historical accuracy.

SLD

 

[Sarpedon]

The terrible conditions during that war are hardly uncommon knowledge. Why would you give a movie credit for showing something that everyone knows about? In the media forum's movie section we came to the conclusion that Civil War movies suck, except for Glory.

 

[Eldarion Lathria]

Gone With the Wind also perpetuates an number of myths about the Antebellum US South. 1: Every plantation house was a Tara. The average plantation house was just a large farmhouse. 2: The plantation owner had leisure. The average plantation owner owned just a few slaves, and worked as long hours, though not in the hot sun like the slaves, as the slaves did. 3: The plantation owner was an 'aristocrat.' They certainly thought of themselves as aristocrats, but they were as conventional and as common, as so many Boston codfish merchants. The average plantation owner was interested in family, money, and social position in that order. Politics was a means of getting money and social position.

The works of W.E. Woodward, an American Southerner who used contemporary sources for his books is my source,

Eldarion Lathria

 

[SLD]

The terrible conditions during that war are hardly uncommon knowledge. Why would you give a movie credit for showing something that everyone knows about? In the media forum's movie section we came to the conclusion that Civil War movies suck, except for Glory.

The problem with 99% of war movies is that they're generally about the glorious deeds of those who fought. That's what Glory was about. But that's only one aspect of it, and so much else is ignored. Rarely do movies portray war as it really is. A nasty dirty business, homes shattered, cities laid waste, thousands of wounded lying in agony. Rampant disease. GWTW did that. GWTW stepped away from the typical depiction and portrayed a different aspect of war that I think got closer to the truth than many others, especially for its day. And it's not that people didn't know it sucked, it's that movies don't really portray how it sucks properly. Scarlett's first husband dies of dysentery. Can you name any other war movie where that happens? But that was indeed how the south lost the vast majority of its casualties 2/3 in fact. I know of no movie that portrayed a hospital scene like GWTW did. Maybe it's just too difficult, but too often in most of our war movies there are only survivors and KIA's. Very few are wounded. Usually though the wounded outnumber KIA by 3-1 at least. And Ashley Wilkes expresses PTSD, not just for witnessing people killed, but for having to kill people - something you almost never see expressed in war movies. Usually the other side is portrayed as just deserving their death.

I think I just admired the movie for taking a very different approach to war than simplistically showing some brave soldiers fighting. The horrors of war aren't experienced by the dead. They feel nothing. It's the survivors that suffer. And I don't know of many war movies that really portray that.

As for Glory I enjoyed it too, but it had a huge glaring historical error that almost destroyed the whole movie for me. They attacked Fort Wagner from the wrong side. It stunned me. I couldn't believe the filmmakers would make such a glaring error. It's on a par with the infamous Cam Ranh Bay sunset in The Green Berets.

SLD

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The terrible conditions during that war are hardly uncommon knowledge. Why would you give a movie credit for showing something that everyone knows about? In the media forum's movie section we came to the conclusion that Civil War movies suck, except for Glory.

Andersonville was pretty good despite being a made for TV movie.

 

[Sarpedon]

For historical accuracy, yes. I did not find it riveting television.

Oh, and you don't film people with the sun behind them if you want to see their faces (which is usually). Films taking minor historical liberties for the sake of the technical requirements of filming is not a problem.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

For historical accuracy, yes. I did not find it riveting television.

But wasn't that the problem? People take so many liberties with history to sex it up. In general, history is not black and white... and often not that exciting. It is what makes the Nazis so useful for movies. That added a lot of black to the gray.

Andersonville wasn't exciting because filming a camp that is starving to death isn't very exciting. There is no brilliant escape, rescue, or liberation. It just was, a war crime with varying levels of bad guys (rebels / some union soldiers) and victims (union soldiers).

 

[Sarpedon]

There are plenty of good historical movies that don't really take too many liberties. I don't think Andersonville had a good narrative to hold it together. It came across as a series of incidents rather than a story.

Frankly, I think there are lots of great stories from the Civil War that people just don't want to make into movies. I have no objection to the 'glory of fighting' style of filmmaking. Films like Gone With the Wind's focus on suffering was an attempt to transform the South into the victim of the war, rather than the aggressor. It is pretty transparent. I forget whether or not they bother mentioning that all those wounded soldiers are the result of General Hood's incompetence. If so, Kudos. I haven't seen that movie for twenty years, and have no desire to see it again.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Oddly, I don't see Gone with the Wind as a war film. I see it as a female capitalist who strives for success. The war is incidental.


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[Tom Sawyer]

Well, you do need to gloss over slavery in order to have someone from the South be the heroine of the movie. If you don't do that, the fact that she's a slave owner kind of overshadows everything else about her.

It's like if Luke Skywalker was a cannibal. Sure, he still destroyed the Death Star and saved the galaxy from tyranny, but if the dude fucking eats people, anything else he does is a distant second in the discussions about him.

 

[LordKiran]

The terrible conditions during that war are hardly uncommon knowledge. Why would you give a movie credit for showing something that everyone knows about? In the media forum's movie section we came to the conclusion that Civil War movies suck, except for Glory.

When I think of shitty civil war movies, I think Field of lost shoes.

 

[Bronzeage]

Well, you do need to gloss over slavery in order to have someone from the South be the heroine of the movie. If you don't do that, the fact that she's a slave owner kind of overshadows everything else about her.

It's like if Luke Skywalker was a cannibal. Sure, he still destroyed the Death Star and saved the galaxy from tyranny, but if the dude fucking eats people, anything else he does is a distant second in the discussions about him.

A lot of things have to be glossed over when making a viable movie. Just as how Luke Skywalker incinerated probably 30 or 40 thousand people when he destroyed the Death Star. All of them had families, and hopes and dreams. But in the movie, they made it look like there was simply no other choice.

I once lived in a house that was a couple hundred yards from the Mississippi River. In the back yard was a 13 inch mortar ball. This is a very big cannon ball. It was found when digging the footings of the house, circa 1920. The thing weighed 200 pounds, which is why it was still there. The real reason it was still there is because it had failed to explode and buried itself in the Vicksburg soil. If it had exploded, most of the neighborhood would have been leveled, and anyone above ground at the time, would have been shredded.

What this means in plain English is, a gunboat of the United States Navy fired a 200 pound explosive artillery projectile into a residential street, which was of no military significance. This particular one did not kill anyone, but most of the similar pieces of ordinance, performed up to expectations. That's something that is glossed over by just about every history of the war.

 

[Sarpedon]

As I pointed out before, the Confederate States made Vicksburg into a target by using it to block navigation on the Mississippi River. It amuses me when people use civilians as human shields and then complain when the other side refuses to conform. As I pointed out, there are rules in warfare that govern whether or not cities could be attacked. In the 19th Century, those rules were actually obeyed most of the time. A city occupied by an army loses the customary protections. The garrison had plenty of opportunity to withdraw and fight another day, but stayed under the direct orders of Jefferson Davis, who felt a few months of inconvenience to shipping was worth both the town and the army.

The Union did shell a few towns for no good reason during that war, but Vicksburg wasn't one.

 

[Bronzeage]

As I pointed out before, the Confederate States made Vicksburg into a target by using it to block navigation on the Mississippi River. It amuses me when people use civilians as human shields and then complain when the other side refuses to conform. As I pointed out, there are rules in warfare that govern whether or not cities could be attacked. In the 19th Century, those rules were actually obeyed most of the time. A city occupied by an army loses the customary protections. The garrison had plenty of opportunity to withdraw and fight another day, but stayed under the direct orders of Jefferson Davis, who felt a few months of inconvenience to shipping was worth both the town and the army.

The Union did shell a few towns for no good reason during that war, but Vicksburg wasn't one.

Well, that certainly makes it okay to shell a residential street, what with all the soldiers being in fortified areas, and all. And, if we can blame it on Jefferson Davis, why not?

 

[Sarpedon]

Those 200lb mortars weren't known for their accuracy. Siege weapons generally weren't. Precision weaponry is a new thing. That's why they had laws about when one could and couldn't attack cities. It is entirely the fault of the people who started the war and occupied the city. Neither of which was the Union.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I agree with F Scott Fitzgerald's assessment of GWTW. It's in one of his letters, and roughly paraphrased, it's that Mitchell wrote a pulpy novel that is about as good as popular fiction written for a mass audience can get. I haven't read it since the winter of '77, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and have kept a copy because I suspect I'll have one more go at it. Reading it is quite a wallow. I loved the amount of detail she packed into the narrative -- the big ball at which Scarlett meets Rhett must be 50 0r 60 pages in the book, when you add in all the fuss about what she'll wear, etc. I got tired of the slave dialect that Mammy has to speak. I think Mitchell has Mammy saying 'wuz' for was, and I thought, well, how did the white folks pronounce was?? Finally, even if you find the whole thing dated, or blind to the brutality of chattel slavery, it did make Carol Burnett's 'Went with the Wind' skit possible. ("I saw it in the window and I couldn't resist!!") (The longest laugh ever, on the Carol Burnett Show.)

 

[LordKiran]

Well, you do need to gloss over slavery in order to have someone from the South be the heroine of the movie. If you don't do that, the fact that she's a slave owner kind of overshadows everything else about her.

It's like if Luke Skywalker was a cannibal. Sure, he still destroyed the Death Star and saved the galaxy from tyranny, but if the dude fucking eats people, anything else he does is a distant second in the discussions about him.

A lot of things have to be glossed over when making a viable movie. Just as how Luke Skywalker incinerated probably 30 or 40 thousand people when he destroyed the Death Star. All of them had families, and hopes and dreams. But in the movie, they made it look like there was simply no other choice.

I once lived in a house that was a couple hundred yards from the Mississippi River. In the back yard was a 13 inch mortar ball. This is a very big cannon ball. It was found when digging the footings of the house, circa 1920. The thing weighed 200 pounds, which is why it was still there. The real reason it was still there is because it had failed to explode and buried itself in the Vicksburg soil. If it had exploded, most of the neighborhood would have been leveled, and anyone above ground at the time, would have been shredded.

What this means in plain English is, a gunboat of the United States Navy fired a 200 pound explosive artillery projectile into a residential street, which was of no military significance. This particular one did not kill anyone, but most of the similar pieces of ordinance, performed up to expectations. That's something that is glossed over by just about every history of the war.

To be fair to Luke Skywalker, those 40k people were all complicit in the mass genocide of an entire planet just (hours?) earlier and were about to do the same thing to his new friends after having killed his family and mentor, so I think he can be forgiven perhaps.

 

[LordKiran]

As I pointed out before, the Confederate States made Vicksburg into a target by using it to block navigation on the Mississippi River. It amuses me when people use civilians as human shields and then complain when the other side refuses to conform. As I pointed out, there are rules in warfare that govern whether or not cities could be attacked. In the 19th Century, those rules were actually obeyed most of the time. A city occupied by an army loses the customary protections. The garrison had plenty of opportunity to withdraw and fight another day, but stayed under the direct orders of Jefferson Davis, who felt a few months of inconvenience to shipping was worth both the town and the army.

The Union did shell a few towns for no good reason during that war, but Vicksburg wasn't one.

Well, that certainly makes it okay to shell a residential street, what with all the soldiers being in fortified areas, and all. And, if we can blame it on Jefferson Davis, why not?

You make it sound as if the soldiers would have all been holed up in a keep or fort just outside of town or something. Was that the fact? Would confederate and union troops be expected to fight from street to street had the union assaulted the confederate stronghold? If so then that renders your point rather moot doesn't it? A neighborhood full of houses is an area full of cover and vantage points for the defenders after all.

 

[Sarpedon]

The Confederate defenses were located outside of the city proper. Fortifications of the era often took up more space than the city they defended. Bronzeage is completely correct when he says that the soldiers were not in the city proper. He is not correct when he says the presence of the shell in the city proper means that the civilian areas of the city were deliberately bombarded. The defenses of Vicksburg were much closer to the city proper than was typical, due to the topography of the bluff it sat upon.

Street fighting was very uncommon in the Civil War. The vast majority of cities captured were abandoned by the defenders when it was clear they could not be defended, and promptly surrendered to the invaders by the civil authorities. Generally, cities were defended by remote forts or entrenchments well beyond the city. Once these fell, no further attempt was made to defend the cities, and the confederates generally pulled out. Vicksburg was different because Jefferson Davis specifically ordered it to be held to the last. Pemberton (commanding) was urged by his immediate superior J. Johnston to ignore this order to save his army. The only instances of actual street fighting in the Civil War I can think of were the initial stages of the Battle of Fredericksburg, the New York Draft Riots, the Baltimore riots, and a few of the Shenandoah valley skirmishes. Perhaps Bronzeage can think of others. Notably, two of these examples took place in northern cities where pro-confederate factions incited riots against the government.

The only Confederate city where the civilian areas were deliberately bombarded was Charleston, which suffered a brief bombardment by a single long range artillery piece called the 'Swamp Angel,' which blew up after a short time. The Confederates, for their part, sent saboteurs to attempt to burn union cities, and in one case managed to blow up a ship laden with ammunition docked on a wharf, killing hundreds of civilians, far more than died at Vicksburg and Charleston. When you add to it the Fort Pillow massacre, the massacre at the Crater, and the extermination of the male population of Lawrence, Kansas, puts the South well ahead in the atrocity department.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Why bother with a few shells? The Union forcibly evacuated and burned many towns in the south. The soldiers gave the destroyed towns the same name: "Chimneyville".