I've been slacking with my reviews lately. I blame Gone with the Wind. It was just so... so... much, that after that other movies just seem too mundane to be worth commenting on. In fact it felt much like this film project was already over, because we have, if you think about it, already come full circle. Sixteen weeks ago we saw the also epic and industry-defining The Birth of a Nation, which even shares many story elements with Gone with the Wind, especially in the first and early second acts. From those primitive beginnings, pretty much all the major filmmaking techniques have now been realized. Everything D. W. Griffith set out to do has been revisited and perfected is one monumental effort. At least according to the standards of the time, Gone with the Wind was very much the Ultimate Movie.
So where do we go from here? I realize now that the '30s really were the true Golden Age of Hollywood; the period that is the most "classic." What sets the next phase of film history apart is a more visible effort to push boundaries; deconstruct old ideas; play with form and tone. Because, in the wake of the Ultimate Movie, what else was there to do?
