In June 2020 and for a few days, HBO Max filmed the Oscar-winning film “gone With the Wind(“Gone with the Wind”) from his film library.

The reason was that the classic 1939 film Victor Fleming (as well as George Cukor and Sam Wood, who were never credited) were blamed for the rise in racial tension in the United States. The popular streaming platform admitted that the blockbuster film glorified the US slave past and did not criticize discrimination against African Americans in the South. In fact, this version has also been improved over the original script, a copy of which was recently released to the public.

Producer conflicts

In particular, the original script used during filming captures the conflicts that took place within the film crew led by the legendary David O. Selznick. David Vincent Kimmel, a historian at Yale University, pointed out that the script, which includes several scenes that were later edited, shows that between the producer, a dozen writers (who included F. Scott Fitzgerald), black actors, and various anti-racist organizations .

On the one hand, there were those who considered it necessary to realistically portray the brutality of slavery. On the other hand, some chose to stay in the spirit of the Margaret Mitchell novel that served as the basis for the film.

Cutted scenes

Kimmel noted that some of the deleted scenes were based on photographs taken during filming. These frames will be included in the final frames in one of the later versions. In one of the deleted scenes, Rhett Butler – the character played by Clark Gable – sits in front of a bottle of whiskey and strokes a gun, possibly contemplating suicide. Suddenly, someone knocks on the door and pulls him out of his thoughts. He hides the gun in one of his boots and stands up abruptly, showing that he is very drunk.

Another scene, which was later cut, shows the riots in Atlanta, Georgia, where the film is set against the backdrop of the Civil War. The camera pan shows Butler driving through the ruined city. The animal stops in chaos. Men and women looted shops and carried off goods taken from businesses. “There is disorder and drunkenness everywhere, and the city descends into chaos as it nears its end,” says the script, which also depicts a man dressed in women’s clothing running in front of a wagon loaded with dresses.

Selznick asked for some details to be cut out that would more realistically show how blacks were treated in the slave South. In the end, references to severe beatings, threats to fire Mamie (Hattie McDaniel) for being lazy, and other physical and emotional abuse were cut from the final script.

To understand what prompted the legendary producer to accept the final cut of the story, David Vincent Kimmel, a Jew who fought rampant anti-Semitism in Los Angeles, turned to the director’s notes. These notes show that Selznick cared not only for the pace and quality of the dialogue, but also for the most accurate reproduction of the novel, published in 1936.

However, the researcher notes that Selznick never wanted to make a racist film and that he was always “very careful” to ensure that his team portrayed African Americans in the best possible light. Despite being faithful to the source material, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Margaret Mitchell never received much help with the production.

Gone with the Wind quickly became one of the most successful film projects and, by some standards, the highest-grossing film of all time. eight Oscars in 1940;including African American Hattie McDaniel in the category of the second female role. However, McDaniel was still forced to sit separately from her co-stars at the awards show because she was black.

According to El Pais