One of the many high points of Gone With the Wind occurs when Rhett Butler, having heard the latest round of rumours about his wife's behavior, drags the longing-to-be-adulterous Scarlett to her beloved Ashley's birthday party, then leaves her at the door, making her face a den of righteous lionesses alone. The drama is wonderfully abetted by the inappropriate/appropriate evening gown Rhett forces his wife to wear: a scandalously red velvet, bejeweled and befeathered. (A gorgeous, though not at all historically correct design by Walter Plunkett.) The beautiful Vivien Leigh never looked more fiercely beautiful, Scarlett never more hypocritically defiant, and it's one of the film's most deliciously tense moments.
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It is without question one of the best costumes in the film for Scarlett. Its also the most egregiously wrong, especially considering the attention to detail that was brought to so much of the costume work, by Plunkett. But I can fully understand why it was exactly as it was. At that moment in the story, she had to be presented fully as the duplicitous character she was, and this costume served that end perfectly.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's a good example of film costume going "wrong" for the right reasons. It does the - dramatic - work it needs to do. Beautifully. Whereas my pet hate, the costumes, hair, etc., from Coppola's Marie Antoinette, are wrong for no dramatic reason. Just an inattention to correctness in what I've read was an effort to make it more palatable to the audience. (Most of whom turned out to be teenaged girls. And, apparently, much of pretty-above-all design was dictated by the likewise-girlish whims of the director.) And then, Milena Canonero won an Academy Award, so now everyone believes what they saw on the screen was the height of accuracy. Argh....
DeleteDid people really think that Coppola's Marie Antoinette was accurate in any respect? I ADORE that movie and of course it's far from accurate in many veins. I think it's successful in creating a sort of gooey atmosphere that is nostalgically representative of the time period -which is a lot more than some awfully accurate things can achieve at times. Just think of the 30s Marie Antoinette with Norma Shearer (which is SOOOO amazing too) which is even MORE inaccurate -comically so -but it's just a fun movie so who cares. The problem comes when people start to think these are history lessons! Just like you can't trust everything you read, you can't trust movies either! haha
ReplyDeleteBut people DO think it's accurate. Uneducated people. Which is most people, and Americans particularly. No one is taught history anymore, and no one is taught any design history - except - in film. For me, one of the biggest problems I have with Coppola's film is that it - approached - some sort of accuracy, and therefore left the general public with the idea that they were seeing "the real thing". One of the best things about Shearer's - delicious - Marie Antoinette, is that, design-wise, it's a complete fantasy; it succeeds brilliantly because it creates its own Hollywood-glamour language. (Of course, there were probably those at the time who thought they were seeing "the real thing", too.)
DeleteWhere Coppola's film fails even more egregiously, of course, is in casting/characterization. Call me nuts, but I think if you're doing a historical drama, you ought to make - some - effort to cast actor's who have some of the physical aspects of the historical characters; physical appearance is an important part of characterization. It seems that Coppola just filled the acting slots with a bunch of her friends, with no thought at all as to the appearance of the real character. A short and dark Louis XVI? A viperish, black-haired du Barry? At least the 1938 film was sensitive to that aspect; for example, I can't imagine Robert Morley's casting as Louis XVI could have been bettered.
Interestingly, in the novel, the Scarlett's evening gown was described as being of green watered silk (moire) with a huge bunch of pink velvet roses on the bustle. Plunkett asked Margaret Mitchell for approval to go with the crimson velvet used in the film. She was perfectly happy about his idea, confessing that green was her own favorite color and its repeated use by her in describing Scarlett's outfits in the book was unintentional.
ReplyDeleteIt's so difficult for a period film to escape the ideas and iconography of its own time! Plus, there's always the need to bow to Hollywood "glamour" something that Plunkett was skilled at incorporating into his work. I love your blog!
I've never read the book, so it's very interesting to find out how the dress actually "looked". Sounds quite beautiful, really. But, no, not nearly as dramatic as the film version; I think they made the right decision in changing it.
DeleteThank you for the kind words about the blog. : )