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Celebrating its 70th birthday this year, the iconic status of Gone With The Wind is more secure than ever. It stands as a monolith over a diffuse and fragmented media landscape: producer David O Selznick's almost-four-hour extravaganza was the jewel in the crown of a kind of studio film-making we shall never see again. Equally important, the mass audience on which its appeal depended has also gone.
Graham Greene, who like the best early film critics was trying to understand this new medium on its own terms, might have been describing Gone With The Wind when he wrote that certain movies were like sporting events: "Made by [their] spectators and not merely shown to them."
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Politically incorrect and racially retrograde, the film has managed at one time or another to offend almost everyone. Its allure, though, is deeper and wider. It's a movie we loved before we learned not to like or approve of it. Max Steiner's sweeping score is nothing if not relentless, yet you need to be made of stern stuff to hear the first few chords of Tara's Theme without getting a slight chill. [...]
Politically incorrect and racially retrograde, the film has managed at one time or another to offend almost everyone. Its allure, though, is deeper and wider. It's a movie we loved before we learned not to like or approve of it. Max Steiner's sweeping score is nothing if not relentless, yet you need to be made of stern stuff to hear the first few chords of Tara's Theme without getting a slight chill. [...]
This entry was posted
on quarta-feira, 13 de maio de 2009
at quarta-feira, maio 13, 2009
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