Gone with the Wind Page to Screen Review

This three and a half hour movie captures the essence of Gone with the Wind in a spellbinding, heart-wrenching and accurate manner. The movie Gone with the Wind is the highest grossing film in Canada and the United States of America with around 202,286,100 admissions.

One of the most famous scenes is when Scarlett O’hara meets Rhett Butler. Scarlett has cornered Ashley Wilkes, the man she loves, in the library and is begging him to marry her. Both the book and the movie show Scarlett as irrational and point out the fact that she is young and naive. The dialogue even follows closely, if not exactly, in both scenes. Scarlett’s fiery and selfish personality is shown in both scenes as she strikes Ashley and proclaims “I’ll hate you till I die.”

In the book, once Ashley leaves, we are faced with Scarlett’s internal dialogue as her hatred and angry of Ashley reflects on how she hates herself for acting so embarrassingly. The movie does its best to portray this fit of angry as she throws a china dish against the wall. The book’s ability to portray her thoughts allows you to see the depth of Scarlett’s character instead of merely temperamental girl she is shown as in the film.

The moment after Rhett appears from his hiding spot on the couch, where he had been listening to the whole ordeal. In the book the interaction between the two is much longer. Scarlett is angry and Rhett, amused, as they are for much of the rest of the book. The movie brushes over the importance of this scene as it is the beginning of the tumultuous relationship between the two. While the movie was a great adaptation of the book, it had nothing on the depth Mitchell was about to give to her characters. The development of relationships was more meaningful when you are able to read what the characters were feeling.