Gone With the Wind made its annual run at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama on Saturday August 7 and Sunday August 8, 2010.  After sitting through several less than desirable showings of Gone With the Wind over the last few years, the Alabama Theatre presented two nearly flawless screening of the film and they did it in style!

The audience was treated to the hi-definition DVD projected through the theater's brand new system!  The result was what I considered to be a nearly perfect showing of the film!  The color, lighting, and aspect ratio were nearly perfect and every piece came together to make this one of the all-time best showings I have ever attended! 

Before I talk about the almost perfect showing of GWTW, I want to share with you, the beautiful photos of the Alabama Theater and the history of the theater.  The Alabama Theater has three levels, a floor, balcony, and mezzanine.  When you get to the top of the theater, you absolutely feel like you are flying!  It is wonderful and this is the best place to truly appreciate the piece of art that is the Alabama Theater.  The theater is trimmed in ornate gold with red velvet seats.  You cannot go to any production, here, and not feel you are part of something special!

Entering the Alabama Theatre is like taking a step back in time.  The original ticket booth is located at the front entrance.  Once you pass the ticket booth, you are greeted to an ornately decorated lobby complete with marble floors and chandeliers.  The concession stand attendees were busily popping popcorn for the film patrons and mixing an assortment of fun drink specials for the afternoon with Scarlett and Rhett!

This theater was so much fun to walk around in because it was almost limitless in places to explore.  It had so many levels, so many little alcoves, lots of fun hallways, and great places to discover.  I could imagine having a great time with an overnight event in this theater because of all the wonderful places to discover!! 

One important aspect I discovered about this theater is that there are restrooms on the second floor.  Whenever you go to a GWTW showing in the theater, it's always important to find out where the less-known restrooms are because Max Steiner just didn't leave enough intermission music for an audience that is majority women to get to the restrooms and back before Sherman burns his way across Georgia leaving Tara to face the famine and hell of defeat!  It's definitely worth the walk up the stairs to visit those restrooms because there was no line and they were absolutely adorable complete with black and white tile floors!!!!

One of the things I look forward to with any screening of GWTW is to have an experience.  I believe this film is one that should be an experience.  The title should be blazing across the marquee of the theater.  The lobby should be set to receive the audience of Gone With the Wind, with a picture or painting from GWTW or people dressed in costume. The effort that the theater puts in to present the picture in the highest quality with the best experience an audience member can have, only accentuates the miraculous production that was left on film for us and the Alabama Theatre certainly rose to the occasion!!!

When I walked into the theater, I found a wonderful slideshow of facts about the production of the film and extensive information about all four of the principal actors of the film.  The slideshow resulted in wonderful conversations happening all around the theater about the production and the occasional exclamation from an audience member of "I didn't know that!"  It was a great way to engage and prepare the audience! 

I photographed the slideshow with facts on Olivia de Havilland.  I have attached below the photos as a slideshow! I hope you will enjoy!

Of course, no historic theater experience is complete without a few rounds of music on the Wurlitzer Organ.  The Alabama Theatre has a beautiful organ with a wonderfully engaging organist.  Just before the GWTW overture, the organist played a few pieces for us.  During the Sunday afternoon performance, a few costumed people were escorted into the theater.  He then welcomed us to the theater and talked about how much this film meant to the theater.  He invited everyone to stick around for the tradition of the sing-a-long at the Alabama Theatre during intermission!

Once the house lights were lowered and the famous overture started, it was like I was swept away.  The sound system was wonderful.  The curtain opened to Gone With the Wind sweeping across the screen and the audience erupting into applause! 

The opening scene is absolutely one of my favorite scenes of the film.  It was gorgeous on this screen, in this theater, through that projector!  The details of Scarlett's dress emerged better than I had ever seen it before!  I was captured from the first moment of both of these showings! 

The clarity of the picture was so close to perfection it was breathtaking.  The gift of watching the high-definition DVD through a high-quality projection system is that deeper layers of the film are revealed to us.  The set was even more ornate and elaborate as the finer details emerged.  Walter Plunkett's costumes have even greater detail than I ever imagined. The fire sequence was absolutely spectacular!  I judge almost every showing by the quality of the fire sequence!  The details shown this time were phenomenal.  I could see sparks and pieces of the set breaking and burning.  

As great as I thought the first night was, the second night was even better. This time during the fire sequence, the lighting technician did red lighting in the arc over the stage.  So, the whole theater was bathed in this red light.  It gave the feel of being in the middle of the fire!

Also, it was an afternoon showing and had a larger audience.  The audience seemed to be even more engaged than the previous night.  I was also more aware of the audience reactions around me.  I think my favorite part were the two teenage girls who were sitting in front of me.  I noticed they were fanning themselves quite frequently but it wasn't until after a couple of times of watching them fan themselves that I realized they were giggling and fanning themselves every time Gable was on the screen!  Yes, Mr. Gable, you can still make young girls flush, giggle, and go weak in the knees at your presence!

I think an entire dissertation could be written on this topic alone.  So, I don't want to try to analyze or over-analyze this because I think Olivia's performance speaks for itself.  But, I did go to Birmingham really wanting to consciously focus more on her performance so that I could write something, special.  Of course I couldn't wait to see her on screen at the moment where Scarlett meets Melanie.  This scene truly exemplifies what Olivia brought to this film and the balance that Melanie gave to Scarlett.  Scarlett was so high-strung that I believe Olivia, through Melanie, balanced the energy!  Scarlett needed Melanie just as Melanie needed Scarlett.  Both Olivia de Havilland and Vivien Leigh used and played off of the immense talent that each of them brought to this film. 

Another aspect of Melanie that I experienced this time was I really felt sympathy for Melanie and felt Melanie's anguish at not having any information about Ashley during the war. While Scarlett spends a lot of time during the war thinking about Ashley, this time I could feel and see Melanie's loss at Ashley's absence.  I believe one of the most poignant moments during this screening was in the hospital scene when Melanie told Scarlett, "they could all be Ashley." 

I also realized, during this screening, how well Melanie balanced Mammy in the long walk up the stairs after Bonnie's death.  Hattie McDaniel's performance as Mammy in that scene is absolutely heart wrenching.  Yet, Melanie is experiencing her own loss, her physical pain, and her own emotional pain.  As Olivia once said, Melanie is quietly telling her story there next to Mammy as they walk up those stairs. 

I was also struck with Melanie's death scene.  I have to remind myself that Olivia was only 22 years old in this film.  Yet, she embodies so many emotions, moments, and even life experiences that required talent and a maturity beyond her 22 years.  I think Melanie's death scene is the epitome of the pure talent that Olivia brought to this character.  Olivia was so true to Melanie that her final scene with Scarlett is profoundly emotional.  Having read about the efforts of Olivia to even get to play this role, and having seen her interviewed about this role, I believe she deeply loved and loves Melanie.  Yet, Melanie dies and the 22-year old Olivia leaves us yearning for Melanie to live yet knowing and having to accept that she is dead at the end of Gone With the Wind.

This film is MADE to be seen in the theater.  If you have never seen it with an audience, you have missed out on an entire aspect of this film!  Going to see Gone With the Wind is not just an afternoon at the movies but experiencing this film exactly as it was meant to be seen when David O. Selznick, Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Victor Fleming and all the rest of the cast and crew were putting it together.   You can't truly appreciate the technical brilliance, directing brilliance, or the acting brilliance of this production in your living room eating pizza!  Those burning King Kong sets were meant to be seen in the theater.  Max Steiner's sweeping and gripping music is meant to be heard filling a theater.  There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like watching Scarlett pick herself up out of the dirt and mud of the front lawn of Tara blazed across the screen of a theater!  I cannot emphasize enough that this film was meant to be seen in a theater!  The highest respect you can pay to yourself as a fan and to all who worked with passion and intensity to put together the greatest film of all time is to go see it in the theater!!! 

I take this issue so seriously that I spend several hours every few weeks searching out the latest showings and putting them in the FILM SCREENINGS section of this site.  Please take advantage of this information. Please let me know if GWTW, or any Olivia de Havilland film, is running in a theater near you.  I depend on the internet and the kindness of strangers to keep it up to date!

Gone With the Wind is something that has been with me since I was 8 years old!   I cannot fully describe how it is impacted and shaped my life. When I was in middle school, I thought I wanted to be a film producer like David O. Selznick!  I also thought, at one point that I would really like to go into film preservation until I watched a documentary on film preservation and realized I couldn't spend my life sitting in front of a computer cleaning a film pixel by pixel! 

Of course, I came to my own discovery of Olivia through Gone With the Wind.  Her character is one that over my 24 year relationship with this film, I have come to immensely respect and yearn to understand and consider more deeply. 

I love this work and I love these actors.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to have met Ms. Ann Rutherford and to have met Mr. Herb Bridges who wrote the book that I carried with me throughout the tumultuous years of middle school!  I am eternally grateful that Olivia has given us so many wonderful interviews and memories of her experiences.  

I cannot imagine growing up without Gone With the Wind.  I was 11 on the 50th anniversary and begged to be taken to Atlanta for the event!  I still have the newspapers detailing Ted Turner's 3-day re-creation of the '39 premiere.  I also remember seeing the film in the theater for the first time during the summer of 1989.  I learned in that moment what it was like to share it with an audience and I believe that is truly the only way to watch this film.  

In 2039, I'll be almost as twice as old as I am now and I can't wait for the 100th anniversary!  In fact, I hope that some of my friends that I met in Marietta in 2009 will be working together to help put on exactly the perfect party for the GWTW 100th anniversary!

The only way that I can sum up my feelings on GWTW is to paraphrase something that I once read that David O. Selznick said of GWTW.  Gone With the Wind was like a guest who came for dinner and stayed for a lifetime!