@ tha moives

Gone with the Wind is a movie based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell. Produced in 1939 it started Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara. The movies follow the lives of its two heroes against the backdrop of the civil war era including what life was before and during the reconstruction period.

It is an excellent movie that had own many awards and was a hit in the box office. From historical perspective however the movie falls short of giving a full picture of the civil war era and the reconstruction period, particularly to the lives of the slaves. The movie however does show the horror of the civil war and the devastation of the south. It also mentions thought not as much as it had about the carpetbaggers the unchanging lives of the freed slaves. So in the main the movie is about the lives of the slave owners and how much they had suffered after they have enjoyed for so long.
With little mention of the slaves who are showed as typically submissive, slow and greedily vindictive when it came to wanting their rights. Failing to show a single good black person other then the nanny, who’s motives for staying were never fully explained.

Another movie that has dealt with the civil war era is Glory. It was 1989 production starting Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. Like Gone With the Wind, Glory was also a product of its time. In that it tried to be balanced in its presentation. The movie primarily evolved around the lives of the freed slaves who constituted the first all-black volunteer union company and their white commander. I thought the movie was truthful and honest in its presentation. Showing the good and the bad on both sides. Showing the southerners who fought not to maintain slavery but for an independent state in which they believed. At the same time it showed how the rage of freed slaves in other regiment was exploited to drive terror in the hearts of the south. In all it was better representative then many of its predecessors of the civil war era.