Here we are at the halfway point to discover the top ten romantic movies and in at number five is 1939 release Gone With The Wind starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.Hot-tempered, self-centred, part-Irish Southern beauty Scarlett O'Hara, played to the teeth by Vivien Leigh, loves the gentlemanly Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard). Smug, rebellious, honest, blockade-running profiteer Rhett Butler, portrayed gracefully and naturally by Clark Gable, loves Scarlett.Ashley, who is also in love with Scarlett, marries his genteel cousin Melanie (Olivia de Havilland) because he believes that their quiet similarities will create a better marriage than Scarlett’s passion. Meanwhile, sparks fly between Rhett and Scarlett at their first encounter and continue throughout Scarlett's first two marriages. Scarlett and Rhett finally wed, but Scarlett continues to pine for her beloved Ashley.
Set against the Civil War and Southern Reconstruction, this tragic love quadrangle offers the burning of Atlanta and fields of wounded Confederates as part of its lush scenery.
Gone With the Wind is widely regarded as one of the epic romantic dramas committed to film and went on to win ten Academy Awards, at the time a record, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Vivien Leigh.
It's the passion of Scarlett O' Hara and Rhett Butler, which is played out against the backdrop of the Civil War that makes this movie a classic, but not dated and unforgettable.
The film is still as popular nearly seventy years later as Gable and Leigh smolder together on the screen the cynical businessman and the imperious landowner are both selfish and flawed in their own way.
Scarlett O'Hara has become one of cinema's most popular and enduring heroines who, throughout the duration of the film, goes from a naive, spoilt child who stomps over everything and everyone to get what she wants to a young woman who, using some of her more undesirable qualities, refuses to let the bad times of the war get the better of her.
Made on an estimated $3,900,000 budget Gone With the Wind went on to gross $390,500,000 and in 1989 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
And despite not ending in the traditional romantic movie way; boy gets girl so on and so forth the film does on a note of optimism 'Tomorrow is another day'.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw