Do you know what color Scarlett O`Hara`s dress is when she walks, setting tongues a-wagging, into Ashley Wilkes` birthday party toward the end of ”Gone With The Wind”?
Red? Scarlet? Burgundy?
Well, unless you saw the film in its first release, you probably don`t know because, lately, the color, like the Old South in the movie`s prologue, has been ”a dream remembered.”
However, thanks to a fine piece of restoration work by the Turner Entertainment Company, you can see ”Gone With The Wind” as it was meant to be seen. That`s right, Turner, as in Ted Turner. He finally got it right: You colorize color movies.
And the new color-corrected version of the classic movie is receiving its theatrical premiere Monday and Tuesday at a sold-out Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Dozens of other cities will receive similar, limited revivals in the next few months.
In Chicago, ”Gone With The Wind” is scheduled to play the Music Box Theater, 3733 N. Southport Ave., Wednesday through next Sunday, at the bargain price of $5.50. Tickets are $10 and $12.50 in New York.
The new print of the film was shown last December on WTBS-TV, Turner`s superstation, but the theatrical print I saw in its entirety is far more subtle and dramatic.
”Gone With The Wind” was made in 1939 in the three-color Technicolor process, using a camera that exposed three strips of film, each sensitive to a different primary color. When processed together, three-strip Technicolor was a thing of beauty.
But subsequent prints of the film have been muddied, while portions of the original negative deteriorated. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the film, an elaborate restoration process was undertaken, using a negative that had been stored by MGM at Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. A revitalized soundtrack also was constructed in an attempt to recreate the experience of seeing the film as audiences did in its premiere engagement in Atlanta on Dec. 15, 1939.
It all works, save for a very few moments-mostly long shots using special photographic effects.
The surprise is that you might think that an old Technicolor film featured garish use of color. On the contrary, the most beautiful visuals for me are the subtle color shadings in such scenes as Melanie`s death bed. Being able to see the white-on-white patterns in shirt fabrics was another revelation. Intense, yes; garish, no.
The glory of the new print will bring honor anew to names not thought of today when talking about the film`s success, specifically production designer William Cameron Menzies and cinematographer Ernest Haller. Both received Oscars, but until now, it wasn`t easy to see why.
The scale of the picture is enormous. Clark Cable is dwarfed by the doors he walks through at Tara. And yet, in closeups and in two-shots, the film seems quite intimate and not oversized. We can study the way Gable listens to Vivien Leigh prattle on and study the way he wrinkles his brow. And yet in scenes of grand dialogue, Haller gives his stars breathing room to belt out famous lines.
The result is the kind of theatrical performances that are sadly out of fashion now. Few actors today seem to have as much fun performing as Gable does. Leigh`s performance is astonishingly convincing, considering her English origin. Her beauty exceeds that of the young Elizabeth Taylor.
And we can see all that only in this print, and certainly not in the sample videotape I rented for comparison. Leigh`s flesh tones are washed out in that and previous versions of the film.
One more point: The film is being presented in its original 1:1.33 aspect ratio, the traditional so-called ”golden frame,” rather than the disastrous wide-screen version MGM produced in the late `60s. The result is a much more intimate, pleasing experience that allows us to get close to this most grand Hollywood epic.
I know many people who claim to have seen ”Gone With The Wind”
recently. They haven`t. But tomorrow is another day.
