CNN: 'Gone with the Wind' still raises fuss after 70 years

[silentfilm]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/15/h ... index.html

'Gone with the Wind' still raises fuss after 70 yearsBy Molly Haskell, Special to CNN
December 15, 2009 7:37 a.m. EST

Editor's note: Molly Haskell is a writer and film critic living in New York. She grew up in Virginia and is the author of, "Frankly, My Dear: 'Gone with the Wind' Revisited" and "From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies."

New York (CNN) -- The premiere of "Gone with the Wind" took place in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 15, 1939, but not without a territorial struggle of its own, a war between the states of California and Georgia.

Producer David O. Selznick of course wanted it in Hollywood. But William B. Hartsfield, the feisty mayor of Atlanta, with a rampant Junior League and the full force of its citizenry behind him, argued it was "their" story and won the day.

Selznick was terrified that he and the hyper-glittery event would be ridiculed by Northerners. Margaret Mitchell, by then a Pulitzer Prize winner and long past her scapegrace flapper days, was terrified the movie would be a vulgar travesty, embarrassing her in front of her friends.

It was, of course, a triumph -- for the South it was like a sweet vindication for their humiliation at the hands of Sherman's army. For Selznick, the biggest gamble of his life would go on to win 10 Oscars and become a success beyond his wildest dreams. In its day the longest and most expensive film ever made, it had cost $4,250,000 to produce. It would go on to become a global hit and, with dollars adjusted for inflation, it remains the biggest blockbuster of all time.

But the tensions and ironies present at the premiere were an indication of fault lines that, without ever completely tarnishing the film as an audience favorite, would plague its 70-year history. How could it not be so in a movie that told "our" nation's history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, from the unreconstructed South's point of view?

A hundred-thousand people turned out on a bitter cold night and there were bands on every street and old men marching in Confederate uniforms. The stars arrived in full force ... the white ones, that is.

Not permitted to attend the premiere in segregated Atlanta were the black cast members, including Hattie McDaniel, who would go on to win an Academy Award for her portrayal of Mammy (and would be the first black to do so). Among the three days of festivities was an all-white Junior League ball serenaded by the Ebenezer Baptist Church Choir, an all-black boys choir directed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and including a 6-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. among its members.

Many of the young who watch "Gone with the Wind" today are horrified -- not only are all blacks slaves, but they are also apparently content with their lot; Reconstruction is an unalloyed disaster. Yet calling the movie racially retrograde is a misnomer. It is very much of its time and place, it's just that we can't bear to look at that time and place -- itself a mark of how far we've progressed.

Most critics today wouldn't touch "Gone with the Wind" with a 10-foot pole -- it's easier to dismiss it as racist or overblown or an apologia for the plantation culture than to take a fresh look at how it has fared and why it has endured for 70 years.

I'm speaking from experience, as I recently published a book about "Gone with the Wind" -- the novel and film. While doing some National Public Radio interviews and responding to listeners' questions, I was struck by how the film continues to raise tempers and inflame feelings.

An elderly gent from South Carolina ranted on about Sherman's burning of the local church, while a youngish black woman said the movie should be consigned to the dustbin of history ... after admitting she'd seen it 500 times. But no less surprising was the huge number of well-considered (and favorable) online responses -- a long, thoughtful appreciation by a black female historian, another from a black male librarian in North Carolina, and other passionate pro-"Gone with the Wind" responses from across the spectrum, some under the guise of "guilty pleasure."

Young-ish black women have told me of responding to the book as teenagers, much as I did, even reading it under the covers with a flashlight. For my generation, Scarlett was outspoken, a renegade, a feminist in hoop skirts, maybe the first of a long line of teenage rebels with a barely defined cause, a vendetta against grown-up hypocrisy.

For my generation of '50s adolescents, it was the book's raciness that made it deliciously taboo (Margaret Mitchell said her own mother wouldn't have let her read it until she was 18). For young black teenagers in the '70s and '80s, it wasn't the raciness as much as the rebellion, the stubborn selfishness of Scarlett -- and they were defying parents who would be horrified to know their daughters could sympathize in any way with a slave-owning plantation mistress.

Yes, the movie may be overblown, may be guilty of giving the South an undeserved moral victory, yet it tells a complicated story in swift, riveting brushstrokes, pulls out all the emotional stops so that even those of us not besotted with the film can hardly resist individual scenes: Just try to stop watching once engaged.

Crafted by the geniuses of the studio system, "Gone with the Wind" is a panoramic epic that never loses sight of its main characters, and -- also startling to young viewers today -- those characters endure vast quantities of pain and suffering in a world turned upside down. There are star-crossed lovers (the fierce beauty of Vivien Leigh, the gentleness beneath the swagger of Clark Gable), the agony of war, of economic loss and devastation, the resilience of a woman who won't accept defeat.

Most original of all is Scarlett herself (you hate her and you love her), a heroine of ambiguous morality who is revolutionary in Hollywood terms in that she refuses to be chastened, brought to heel, transformed by love.

The movie crosses race and gender lines and shows that single-issue sympathies are out of date. We can finally take a more nuanced approach, appreciate just how majestic Hattie McDaniel's performance is. (When she was criticized at the time by the NAACP she famously retorted, "I'd rather get paid $700 a week playing a maid than $7 a week being one.")

After the controversy, Hollywood made a concerted effort to expand roles for blacks. It has been a slow and arduous process as we can see by the fact that despite a record number of African-American performers, no black director has won an Oscar. But if there'd been no "Gone with the Wind," it might have started later and taken even longer. The movie is a cultural touchstone that, as one reader wrote to The Wall Street Journal, "shows us not only where we've been, but also how far we've come."

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Molly Haskell.

[LouieD]

I can't stand this movie.

[Scoundrel]

GWTW is entertaining but it's "importance" is extremely overblown.

Why wouldn't CNN shill this one,...it's Ted Turners favorite movie.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

GWTW is entertaining but it's "importance" is extremely overblown.

Out of curisity, what would you consider to be the film that is the culmination of the studio system?

[milefilms]

Out of curisity, what would you consider to be the film that is the culmination of the studio system?

Either
Golden Dawn
Sh! The Octopus
Song of Norway
Heaven's Gate (depending on your use of "culmination")

[dr.giraud]

GWTW is entertaining but it's "importance" is extremely overblown.

Why wouldn't CNN shill this one,...it's Ted Turners favorite movie.

CNN has no reason to curry favor with Ted. He sold out to Time Warner long ago. Whether or not they're helping out their corporate TW brethren I have no idea.

It's important for a lot of reasons, but perhaps the most important one is how popular it has remained, decade after decade. After buying out Selznick (I think Whitney bought out Selznick and then he was bought out, actually), MGM reissued the damn thing a number of times--and made money every time. When it was first broadcast on network TV, the ratings were ridiculous. And, first, MGM, and now, Warner Bros., have reissued GWTW multiple times in every new home video format.

Why? Well, I'll bet they don't do it to lose money.

[LouieD]

Out of curisity, what would you consider to be the film that is the culmination of the studio system?

So by writing "culmination of the studio system", I guess you mean biggest turd ever laid in Hollywood?

[Mike Gebert]

Interestingly, my wife says that exactly 20 years ago tonight, we were waiting in line in the Chicago cold outside the Music Box for a 50th anniversary showing of Gone With the Wind.

GWTW is far, far from my favorite Hollywood film. I think it has a sprightly, witty first half and something of a drudge of a second half, as it ticks off the deaths of minor characters to punish Scarlett (and, like a Harry Potter film, include every major point the readers remember). Like a lot of epics, it's sure it's very serious about something, but seems to have misplaced exactly what that was.

Still, I think it's a tribute to old Hollywood's ability to wring maximum value out of a property, and it's much more progressive than it seems at first glance— for all the supposed tribute to the glory of the Old South, the entire male population seems to be romantic dunderheads, save the one modern cynic in the bunch; and the one person who shares his understanding of Scarlett's true nature is not a white male but Mammy, with whom he trades a knowing glance or two that says it all.

Anyway, the fact that I haven't seen it again since that cold night in Chicago surely says how much interest it holds for me another time, but hey, try sitting through The Great Ziegfeld again, or Wilson, or something, and you'll appreciate why GWTW has lasted as long as it has-- though the once widely held sentiment that it was the greatest film ever made or ever to be made, which was entirely manufactured by Selznick's publicity machine but then took hold in the culture, seems to have vanished at long last.

[Christopher Jacobs]

While GONE WITH THE WIND may not be my favorite film of all time (although I've seen it at least 10 or more times in theatres, plus campus 16mm screenings, TV, and home video), it's arguably the most famous film of the 20th century and undeniably popular with a wide range of viewers (much as films like TITANIC, STAR WARS, BEN-HUR, and others). I think, as Molly Haskell implies, this is due in great part to the continually modern feeling, generation after generation, of Scarlett O'Hara's character as played by Vivien Leigh, as well as the innate humanity that shines through the stereotypes and soap opera.

Below is my recent review of the BluRay release for the High Plains Reader (as the second of two new box set reviews along with "Rome--The Complete Series" available at http://hpr1.com/film/article/rome_and_g ... ray_boxes/ ) :

--Christopher Jacobs
http://hpr1.com/film
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs

-----------------------------------------------------

“Gone With the Wind,” a legendary film from the height of the Hollywood studio era, made its world premiere 70 years ago this month. Since that time, the epic saga adapted from a best-selling novel of a family just before, during, and after the American Civil War has become as much a part of our culture as the war itself. It’s basically another soap opera of characters’ personal problems against the historical backdrop. But it’s also a vivid recreation of a way of life “gone with the wind” as nostalgically imagined by the descendants of the generation that lived it, a collective oral history re-enacted on the screen through memorable characters that continue to touch an emotional core.

The movie, quite simply, is an American classic that is able to overcome a variety of flaws and appeal to later generations in a way nearly as timeless as such masterpieces as “The Wizard of Oz” or “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Scarlett and Rhett’s story resists the remake syndrome, and was regularly re-released theatrically through the 1990s. Warner Home Video, current owners of the film, have gone back to the original camera negatives to restore the picture and sound digitally in such a way that the BluRay actually looks better than many if not most of the 35mm film prints shown in theatres.

The 70-year-old sound quality may not be quite up to 21st-century recording standards, but sounds amazingly good, and is tastefully remastered for stereo surround, with the original mono track as an available option (not to mention numerous foreign-dubbed versions, and a very good audio commentary by historian Rudy Behlmer, full of information on the production, personnel, and historical background).

The picture quality is actually better than BluRay transfers of some films made today, both in clarity and in color. People who have never seen “Gone With the Wind” in a theatre, especially if they’re used to the image of old movies on numerous poor video copies, may have a hard time believing that it was actually filmed in 1939.

The deluxe limited-edition anniversary box set, designed for the hard-core GWTW fan, is lovingly packaged in a red velveteen cardboard box with hardcover book of color photos, a miniature reproduction of the original theatre program, a CD of the soundtrack, watercolor painting reproductions, and more. There’s also another BluRay disc that contains over eight hours worth of documentaries going behind-the-scenes, reflecting on its success, describing its restoration, chronicling the amazing list of memorable movies released in1939, along with a 1980 telefilm dramatizing the casting difficulties, an historical short film about “The Old South” and a trailer gallery. A separate DVD has a 6-hour documentary on the MGM studios (the same one included as a bonus with “The Wizard of Oz” BluRay edition). The only disappointment is that all bonus features are standard-definition.

The BluRay box set is a bit pricey at $85 list, but well worth it to die-hard fans of the film, and only about $46 through Amazon, the same or less than the standard DVD set is often selling for in stores. Those who want just the movie without the extras can find it exclusively at Target stores at present, for about $40, sometimes discounted to about $35.

“Gone With the Wind” on BluRay at a glance:
Movie: A Video: A+ Audio: A- Extras: A-

[Jim Reid]

After buying out Selznick (I think Whitney bought out Selznick and then he was bought out, actually)

Whitney was Selznick's partner. Selnick sold the film to MGM in the 40s when he needed money. When they disolved the company, Selznick took half the films and Whitney took the other half which he let the copyrights expire on.

[Harold Aherne]

Whitney was Selznick's partner. Selnick sold the film to MGM in the 40s when he needed money. When they disolved the company, Selznick took half the films and Whitney took the other half which he let the copyrights expire on.

Wouldn't you know that I was looking up copyright renewal info on the Selznick International titles just today?

Little Lord Fauntleroy (36)--not renewed
The Garden of Allah (36)--renewed 1964
A Star is Born (37)--not renewed (went to WB for remake)
The Prisoner of Zenda (37)--renewed 1964 (went to MGM for remake)
Nothing Sacred (37)--not renewed
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (38)--renewed 1965
The Young in Heart (38)--renewed 1965
Made for Each Other (39)--not renewed
Intermezzo (39)--renewed 1967
Gone with the Wind (39)--renewed 1967 (at MGM since 1944)

That's where the book cut off, but I'm pretty sure all subsequent Selznick titles were renewed. The ABC acquisitions apparently took place in 1966, as a NYT article from that year mentions the sale. The Young in Heart is apparently one that was given to Whitney, but unlike the others it was renewed so I wonder if Selznick or someone else re-acquired it.

-Harold

[missdupont]

Selznick did not sell the film to MGM for money. He and Jock Whitney were dissolving SIP in 1942 and had to liquidate all assets, per the financial advice he was receiving. He wanted to buy Whitney out, but Jock didn't want to sell, so DOS sold his share. According to David Thomson in SHOWMAN, DOSP sold its 44.926304 percent interest to Jock Whitney and his sister Joan Payson on August 30, 1942 for $400,000 cash, plus the interest in SIP's accounts receivable held by Jock, Joan, and C. V. Whitney. Two years later, this interest amounted to $304,665. Jock and Joan then sold to MGM by September 1943 for $2.2 million. Jock and Joan also bought the 44% interest in REBECCA just before GWTW.

[Jim Roots]

Overlooked in Haskell's article is the completely b******t claim by one of her radio listeners that she has seen it 500 times.

500 times? Can anyone possibly have seen any film 500 times, even a one-reeler?

What's the film you've seen the greatest number of times in your life, and take a guess at how many times you've seen it?


Jim

[FrankFay]

What gets me is that the movie is barely the first half of the novel, and a LOT happens to Scarlett in the second half, but it has been completely ignored, they are never going to film it in any form, "Scarlett" just exists to get her back in Rhett's arms again.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

Interestingly, my wife says that exactly 20 years ago tonight, we were waiting in line in the Chicago cold outside the Music Box for a 50th anniversary showing of Gone With the Wind.

And I was in the cold in Atlanta for the so-called "re-premiere" with all the (then) surving cast members (save Olivia, who's about the only one still with us.)

Still, I think it's a tribute to old Hollywood's ability to wring maximum value out of a property, and it's much more progressive than it seems at first glance— for all the supposed tribute to the glory of the Old South, the entire male population seems to be romantic dunderheads, save the one modern cynic in the bunch; and the one person who shares his understanding of Scarlett's true nature is not a white male but Mammy, with whom he trades a knowing glance or two that says it all.

If the Selznick mythology is to believed, it was the first major film intended for white audiences where the producer sat down with his black cast for a dialogue on how to make the whole thing still dramatically/historically viable, but less onerous and demeaning for those members of his cast. For instance, one will note that the N word is never uttered by anyone.

Some directors, like Ford, Vidor and Whale were certainly sympathetic and communicative with their actors of color in pre-GWTW films, but I don't know of any producers who were so hands-on in dealing with the concerns of their black cast members.

And McDaniel's performance is much more than a combination maid/Jiminy Cricket. She worked hard to get an authentic Georgia accent and her Oscar-winning breakdown scene at the end of the film is a very nice piece of acting by any measure. And how revelatory it must have been to white audiences in 1939 who had never seen a person of color show such range in a film. Sadly, it would take the better part of two decades before they would again.

What's so truly awful is that, after the abomination of slavery, it took this country a century to get from Emancipation to the Civil Rights Act, so victories for the AA community had to be found in such small doses. While the GWTW film glorified the Old South even more than the novel did - which adds to its race problems - the film still was a positive milestone for race in many areas. Sadly, that often gets lost.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

500 times? Can anyone possibly have seen any film 500 times, even a one-reeler?

What's the film you've seen the greatest number of times in your life, and take a guess at how many times you've seen it?


Jim

With home video, that's extremely possible. I've seen kids watch a Disney film to the end, then retsart it again immediately.

Theatrically, I've seen (well, been in the same room as) The Rocky Horror Picture Show *easily* over 200 times.

[Jim Reid]

Back in the 70s, one of the film books I bought was The Films of Clark Gable. It was one of those Citadel films of books. The synopsis of GWTW has some scenes described that are not in the film. I'm guessing that the author may have read the book but not seen the film. A little odd considering it's the subject of the book's most famous film.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

What gets me is that the movie is barely the first half of the novel, and a LOT happens to Scarlett in the second half, but it has been completely ignored, they are never going to film it in any form.

Huh?

There's a lot missing from the novel in the finished film - particulalry in terms of dropped characters (Will Benteen, Scarlett's other children, etc.) but, as Mike previously noted, all the major plot points - from first to last page - are in the final film.

[FrankFay]

sorry, maybe I'm misremembering both.

[Scoundrel]

" Out of curisity, what would you consider to be the film that is the culmination of the studio system? "


Dwain Esper's MANIAC.




Actually, I try to shy away from these " what is the greatest film " questions because I haven't seen everything and what can one say about those films that are lost...?

I mean where does one go with this ...?

GWTW is loved by many but CITIZEN KANE appears in 1940, and isn't that supposed to be the "best film ever made"...?

Our spoon fed media enriched society is gorged on "culture" which IMHO is in the eye of the beholder.

How does someone justify GWTW when they may have never seen INTOLERANCE or CITY LIGHTS or ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT...? The films of DeMille, Kubrick, Whale, Curtiz, Wyler, Capra, Robert Wise and Woody Allen...?

I'm not placing you, Harlett in this example.

It's just that I am still discovering so much that is available now on home video...like the pre codes
and the bastard step children of poverty row as well as the "classics" and it's hard to choose.

Like someone said in another thread, there are so many films available now that I NEVER thought I would see....Thirty years ago I was told that Edison's FRANKENSTEIN was a lost film and now a DVD copy is in my collection. This is really a wonderful time to experience classic film and to get continually hammered by the same old same old "classics" does a disservice to what Hollywood has to offer, IMHO.


Yes, GWTW is a quality picture and there is much to admire but pardon me if I feel a little sugar shock from all the hype.


Regards,

Steven Sobolewski



P.S. ROCKY HORROR...? 200 Times...? I genuflect to your passion.

[Richard P. May]

A few years ago, for its 75th anniversary, the Academy screened each of the best picture winners, one every Monday. When it got to GWTW, you can see why the acclaim.
It was the first Best Picture winner in color. With all respect to the earlier winners, its production values were immensely better.
Regardless of much of it being dated, for social and dramatic reasons (Scarlett's perfect lipstic during the escape to Tara at the end of part one, for instance) it has many reasons for its enduring popularity.

[Arndt]

it's much more progressive than it seems at first glance— for all the supposed tribute to the glory of the Old South, the entire male population seems to be romantic dunderheads,

I never realized that until I read your contribution here, Mike, but GWTW is very close to DIE NIBELUNGEN in that way. DIE NIBELUNGEN is supposed to be a celebration of everything Germanic when really every character in it is a simpleton or a hooligan. It is a deconstruction of Germanic myth in the same way that GWTW is a deconstruction of the Old South.
Both films show attractive worlds that nevertheless are so obviously flawed that they have no chance of surviving when confronted with much more viable and dynamic social systems. But there is great drama to be had from watching their agony. That's what both films cash in on.

[Jack Theakston]

And of course, we all know the real reason why GWTW is so great: it was the first color movie ever!

[Einar the Lonely]

I strongly disagree that NIBELUNGEN is a deconstruction of the Germanic myth. The contrary is true. If the characters might appear to some as "simpletons" or "hooligans" then this only testifies for me that the film did little to modernize or "psychologize" the (deceptive) simplicity of the medieval tale. And there was little attempt to update the medieval mindset that created the myth, which is precisely why the characters seem "flawed" to us. Mythic figures are like that; carved from wood, simple, violent, archaic, guided by passion and passionate gods. And paganic - there is little to no christianity in the characters of the Nibelungenlied. Odysseus and Achilles are no different in this respect - yet they are portrayed in this way in Homer's original epic and not through any modern deconstruction. Also Lang's and Harbou's dedication "To the German People" was by no means ironic. Certainly there existed a bourgeois-nationalistic pastiche of the myth. But the real thing is as edgy as is Romanticism, Wagner, Kleist and Goethe ... Later Lang compared the Western with the Nibelungenlied as the mythical background of the USA.

Also it is less the more "dynamic social system" of King Etzel's huns that leads to the downfall of the Nibelungen, but rather the demons within their characters that drive them into their destiny, the fatalistic "All or Nothing" spirit which played such a crucial role in German history, art and thinking. The film gloriously captures this ambivalent power of the myth.

[Mike Gebert]

GWTW is loved by many but CITIZEN KANE appears in 1940, and isn't that supposed to be the "best film ever made"...?

'41, actually, but I think it's worth noting that both reputations as THE greatest movie ever made were the result of deliberate campaigns to sell that idea which began before the movies came out. As I wrote at AMS and the IMDB long ago:

Throughout the 1930s there was a certain critical faction, especially in New York, that felt that the art of the cinema died with the arrival of talkies-- that movies got visually dull and politically timid in dealing with the important issues of the time (remember that the whole debate about whether Hollywood should make social problem/message movies like The Grapes of Wrath would have just happened when Kane was made). That Hollywood had sold out for the buck, turned its back on geniuses like Griffith and Stroheim and the kind of cinematic art represented by German Expressionist classics like The Last Laugh and Sunrise.

The capper on the whole decade would have been the enormous hype for Gone With the Wind, a masterpiece of middlebrow sentiment that even the New York critics were cowed into tiptoeing around. (Read the NY Times review, in which future Searchers screenwriter Frank Nugent feels compelled to argue, a bit nervously, why it might NOT be automatically the greatest movie ever made.) Once in a while these critics had managed to make a certain smaller noise about a movie they felt met their criteria, such as John Ford's The Informer, which was about as good an imitation of a German Expressionist silent picture as Hollywood ever made.

Along comes a New York theater figure, Welles, who makes a movie which looks like The Informer (even using a cinematographer who had worked with Ford and apprenticed under the cinematographer of The Last Laugh), but unlike the somewhat ponderously arty Informer has a much livelier American-feeling pace that links it to the tradition of American newspaper comedy-dramas. Where cameras had been mostly parked at a two-shot distance for ten years, Welles uses his like a silent filmmaker, diving through skylights and burrowing in for mammoth closeups. He plays with the medium by starting his movie with another movie, a newsreel, which he mocks brilliantly (and there were plenty of people in New York then who delighted in the mocking of the Time-Life empire). And he dares to poke its nose into the personal life of a still-feared and influential figure, Hearst, at a time when, say, Hollywood could make a movie about the Dreyfus case 40 years before and still be too timid to say the word "Jew."

So not surprisingly, the critics, thinking that most of humanity thinks Gone With the Wind is the best movie ever made, jump all over a movie that seems to have been made just for them and say, no, HERE'S the greatest movie ever made....

Of course, in Kane's case the campaign to call it the greatest movie ever made was also waged in order to cow Hollywood out of suppressing the film to appease Hearst. Still, there are a lot of ways you could do that without having to call a film the greatest ever. The critics said that because it was made just for them, in a way that they associated with great film art-- which they believed to have been dead for a decade.

[Jack Theakston]

Hollywood didn't sell out for the buck, it was built upon the buck. Unfortunately, this truism always knocks a lot of historians' theses to the ground.

And while CITIZEN KANE was lauded at the time— the sort of advertisement and pre-hype that lives with us to this day in films like AVATAR— GONE WITH THE WIND had a market before the picture was made, namely, the folks who read Margaret Mitchell's novel. Winning a Pulitzer didn't hurt the name value any, and Selznick was certainly riding the wave of the book's reputation.

Of course, when it comes right down to it, you can't account for taste. My top five will probably film scholars scoff. That's ok— I don't care. I like what I like. Generally speaking, KANE and GWTW are excellent examples of right place/right time, and the unanimous reception that they get from people that know film put them on the "top." But saying that they're the best movies ever made? Pfft.

[rollot24]

I will admit that I haven't seen GWTW since the 70's and then only in the "wide screen" version. I was not impressed at the time mainly because I bought into the hype and then failed to see what all the fuss was about.

Now that it has been several years, I'm tempted to pick up a used copy of a recent reissue (yes they're out there) and try to watch it with a more "educated" eye.
I do love CITIZEN KANE. I find it enormously entertaining. I used to watch it once a year just to keep my faith that movies are worth while.

[dr.giraud]

And of course, we all know the real reason why GWTW is so great: it was the first color movie ever!

It's also the first movie in which anyone said "damn!"

(Yes, I actually heard a college professor say that around 1983. . . .)

[Jim Roots]

500 times? Can anyone possibly have seen any film 500 times, even a one-reeler?

What's the film you've seen the greatest number of times in your life, and take a guess at how many times you've seen it?


Jim

With home video, that's extremely possible. I've seen kids watch a Disney film to the end, then retsart it again immediately.

Theatrically, I've seen (well, been in the same room as) The Rocky Horror Picture Show *easily* over 200 times.

I have kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities that make it even easier for them than for normal kids to watch the same videos over and over again. But even by age 13 they haven't seen anything 500 times.

And "being in the same room" while a film is playing, is not the same thing as sitting down and watching it. You haven't watched Rocky Horror from start to finish 200 times.

Jim

[Harlett O'Dowd]

And "being in the same room" while a film is playing, is not the same thing as sitting down and watching it. You haven't watched Rocky Horror from start to finish 200 times.

Jim

Only because I was one of the idiots in costume mimicking the action of the film in front of the screen.