REVIEW: Gone with the Wind [1939]

“All we’ve got is cotton and slaves and … arrogance” For years I’ve thought Gone with the Wind some grand, epic romance. How else could anyone take its smoldering poster of Clark Gable ready to ravish Vivien Leigh as her dress falls helplessly from her shoulders? This advert proves as manipulative as the woman positioned at the film’s center because it’s Scarlett O’Hara’s (Leigh) tale from start to finish, complete with every tragic morsel of life’s lemons both unwitting and a result of her own doing. A spoiled brat believing…

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REVIEW: The Deep Blue Sea [2011]

“Beware of passion. It always leads to something ugly.” Almost fifty years after its publishing, Terence Rattigan‘s play The Deep Blue Sea has made it back to the big screen in an adaptation by writer/director Terence Davies. In a year with two British stage revivals, it only seems fitting that the original 1955 film starring Vivien Leigh would receive an update as well. Dealing with the contrasting concepts of love and lust, it’s a tale of one woman and her desire for passion inside a world quick to deem it…

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