Gone with the Wind (and other musings)

I watched Gone with the Wind this week. I split it between two days because I didn't really feel like spending four hours watching a movie, but it certainly wasn't boredom that made me take a break. It was a good movie. Though, predictably, not as good as the book.

And not because of "OMG THEY CHANGED EVERYTHING!" because they really didn't change that much. Some events were skipped or merged with other events, same with characters, just for simplicity's sake. But that wasn't really bothersome. It's just that the book went so much more in depth. Yeah, a lot of it was general description of life in the South which was kind of boring to read, and wouldn't translate to the movie anyway. But even without all that, it's still a LONG book. They probably could have made the movie six hours long, and you still wouldn't get to know Scarlett as well as you do in the book, actually getting inside her head instead of just watching her actions.

I also found it interesting, between watching this, and watching the Alfred Hitchcock movie I saw last week, to note just how much movies have changed. Older movies are almost like watching a play. They're all about telling a story. Sure, plenty of newer movies still focus on the story -- the really good ones do, anyway -- but even movies that aren't loaded with special effects and gimmicks still just feel different. And movies from, say, 30 years ago . . . they aren't like the old movies, but they aren't like movies now either (and not just because of the clothes and hair). Thinking about all this kind of makes me wish I'd taken a film class when I was in school, and had a chance to look at just how movie-making conventions have changed over time.