Reviews

Nor is she an angel sent from heaven. She is an imaginary friend from within. She represents a side of Drew which he's never taken the time to develop: a spontaneous, caring, curious and humorous side. His conversations with her is really his thought process realising that kind of person he really wants to be. This should put the 'Dream Manic Pixie Girl' trope to rest. She isn't a character solely existing to validate him because she isn't a real character at all. She is Drew himself.

At the end of this movie, my friend told me that the trunk John Candy's character carries around throughout the film contains his wife Marie's body parts. I rewatched it recently and saw the film in a whole new light!!

It's interesting to me how feminists, specifically single career women, were the ones who were outraged over Alex, when really the character seemed more like a fearful commentary on gay subculture in New York. Alex's queerness is defined in four phases:

1) Her rapacious sexual appetite and the ongoing mystery of her sexual history.

2) The framing of her inhabiting desolate, hellish spaces outside of 'healthy, homely' human civilisation (her meatpacking district apartment etc). There's a shot of her spying on Dan and Beth's house in the countryside, where she sees the married couple sat next to a roaring fireplace with their child and bunny rabbit: a Republican approved commercial of the 'all American family'. Alex's face contorts and she recoils from this to vomit: denied a place in heaven, she is condemned to the wilderness.

3) Her drag queen chic (Medusa hair, claw-like red nails and flashy outfits).

and finally...

4) The idea of her being insidious and diseased - seemingly in the mind, but on closer examination, being presented like a disease unto others. The narrative dictates that Alex is damned as a bringer of pestilence and as such has no recourse but to destroy Dan and Beth's heavenly existence.

However unconsciously, I come to the conclusion that the movie resonated because Alex embodied the spectre of AIDS upon an aspirational society.

I have a theory that the whole American daytime soap aesthetic was inspired by the second half of Gone with the Wind, in terms of the staging, lighting and dialogue. It becomes a story about interpersonal relationships, whereas the first half of the movie relates to the characters more in the context of their time and history. For these reasons, I can see why the film has mass appeal, because it tells its story through two sensibilities. Had George Cukor remained as director, I am sure the whole film would have been more in line with the soap opera approach, but the Victor Fleming touch gave it the epic grandeur and vitality that makes the first half of the movie breathtaking. In my opinion, you have to really invest in the characters in order for the second half of the movie to keep you captivated. As far as GWTW is concerned, the only disadvantage of changing its approach is that by the end of the film, several events happen in such rapid succession of each other that something feels unnatural and forced. This is because the very power of the soap opera approach lies in its ability to draw narrative out in a way that is driven by character and not plot: slowly, meticulously and over a long period of time... and this is why film was never the soap opera's favoured medium, because most mainstream movies are contained narratives and need to be plot driven to meet their criteria. And that is the very reason why women tend to be secondary in modern Hollywood, because most men are traditionally yearning for action and adventure and women reflect on their feelings and motivations: you can make a box office hit that meets the former criteria quite easily, but the latter is something that is so incredibly complex, you had best turn to literature and television soap opera/serial drama for it to be fully realised. Gone with the Wind and Titanic managed to bring the epic and soap opera together, which is why they resonated profoundly with the culture.

When James Cameron cast the esteemed soap opera actor Eric Braeden as John Jacob Astor in Titanic, he knew exactly what he was doing. Braeden has been compared to Clark Gable frequently, and like Gable, was referred to as the 'King' of his medium... watch any scene between Victor and Nikki sparring in their mansion in classic episodes of The Young and the Restless, and it will immediately recall Rhett and Scarlett in the second half of Gone with the Wind...