Best Picture Bracket, Round 2
In 2018, Entertainment Weekly published a bracket called "The Greatest Best Picture of All Time." I am now on a quest to watch and rate all the represented movies.
The plot of Gone With the Wind is four hours long, and goes something like this: a spoiled brat named Scarlett is growing up on an antebellum Georgia plantation, surrounded by slaves who seem downright happy to be there.
She is in love with a man, Ashley, who doesn't love her back. So naturally she marries his fiancee's brother to make him jealous, which doesn't work. Then the Civil War breaks out. Her first husband dies off-screen. Scarlett therefore moves to Atlanta to live-with-slash-attempt-to-undermine her sister-in-law, Ashley's wife, Melanie.
Melanie is a thoroughly sweet, decent woman who thinks the best of Scarlett, although Scarlett most certainly doesn't deserve that much credit. They become friends as they work together to support the glorious Confederate cause. Meanwhile, the smuggler Rhett Butler falls for Scarlett, but she repeatedly rejects him because she's still carrying a torch for Ashley - her newfound bestie's husband, mind you! Ashley continues to reject her, for obvious reasons, although on Christmas 1863 he does kiss her while asking her to take care of his newly-pregnant wife.
Melanie goes into labor with Ashley's child at the same time that the Confederates lose the Battle of Atlanta and decide to burn the city down on their way out. (In real life, there was a 2-month gap between the battle and the burning, so presumably she was in labor for a very long time.) Scarlett delivers the baby and then runs to Rhett for help getting herself, Melanie, the baby, and their slave Prissy, home to her plantation.
Unfortunately, the plantation has been ransacked, Scarlett's mother has died, both her sisters are sick, her father has lost his mind, and of all their slaves, only Mammy and Porky are still hanging around. (Technically, those two are freedmen, but the movie never mentions as much - they continue to obey Scarlett and treat her like family, just like good loyal slaljklasfj - oh, sorry, I can't type when I'm rolling my eyes.) Anyway. Scarlett dramatically vows that she'll never go hungry again, and the movie breaks for intermission.
You read that right - we're only halfway through this plot.
To speed it up, I'll summarize Act II: Scarlett, Melanie, and Mammy defend and rebuild the plantation as best they can, which includes murdering a Union deserter. Scarlett tricks her sister's fiance into marrying her because she needs his money. Some years later that husband gets killed while carrying out an attack against the camp of freedmen. Fortunately, Rhett manages to help the white supremacists escape murder charges by arranging for all of them to confess to solicitation of prostitution, instead. This brilliant strategic move causes Scarlett to fall in love with Rhett and marry him. They have a baby, she decides she doesn't want more babies, he rapes her in a scene that's played as romantic, and she miscarries the resulting pregnancy becausehe shoves her downstairs she falls while they're arguing. Their 10-year-old daughter dies in a riding accident. Rhett goes mad with grief, but Melanie comes to the rescue. Then Melanie suddenly suffers a fatal miscarriage and, on her deathbed, asks Scarlett to be better to Rhett. Scarlett, seeing Ashley's grief over Melanie, finally catches on that Ashley doesn't love her. (It has been, at this point, at least 15 years since he first tried to tell her that.) She rushes home to tell Rhett that everything's all right and she's going to love him properly, but he's had enough and leaves her. But, tomorrow's another day!
In short, it's a film about narcissists and abusers being awful to each other until they all die. This movie has record-holding viewership, y'all.
Strangely enough, despite the rampant racist undertones in the plot, Gone With the Wind did strike one tiny blow for civil rights in this country. When Hattie McDaniel was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Scarlett's Mammy/moral compass, the ceremony was in a segregated venue. MGM pressured the Academy to allow an exception, and so Ms. McDaniel and her escort became the first two black people allowed to attend the Oscars. She also became the first black actress to win an Oscar. (The second, Whoopi Goldberg, won in 1990, aka half-a-damn-century-later.)
Marty is the shortest Best Picture ever, clocking in at just 91 minutes, more than 2 hours shorter than Gone With the Wind. It might also be the first movie ever adapted from a TV show, depending on your definition of "TV show," because the script originated as a play that was performed and broadcast live on NBC in 1953. The main characters are two nice people with bad luck in love who find each other and must decide whether to give romance one more chance, or not.
In short, this is the polar opposite of Gone With the Wind.
Marty is a Bronx-based Catholic butcher who's been looking for a woman "every Saturday night of my life." But he's not terribly good-looking or successful, and can't seem to hit it off with anyone in particular. At 34*, he's still single. His elderly Italian mother just can't understand it - all of his siblings and cousins are married, so why can't he find somebody? His friend circle is made up of other single men, but most of them are only looking forsex ahem "dates."
Finally, one Saturday night Marty finds himself in a weird situation at a dance hall: a man comes up and offers him $5** to take his date home so that he can hook up with someone prettier. Marty is shocked and says, "You can't just walk out on a girl like that!" But the man next to him accepts the money. The woman, Clara, sees right through the ruse, hollers at her date, and then runs onto the fire escape in tears. Marty goes to see if she's all right...and they instantly hit it off.
Most of the rest of the run-time is devoted to their Saturday night. They dance, they go for coffee, they walk around the neighborhood, and they talk about everything - their previous struggles with depression, their careers (she's a science teacher considering an offer to be a department head, he's trying to decide whether to buy his own butcher shop), and the pain of being alone in a world built for couples. By the end of the night, he's introduced her to his mother and promised to call her the very next day after Mass.
As luck would have it, though, nobody else likes Clara. Marty's mother is distracted by her sister Katherine's troubles - a daughter-in-law she can't get along with - and comes to the rather absurd conclusion that, if Marty gets married, she'll end up as the hated mother-in-law instead of the beloved mother. So she tells him she doesn't like him dating non-Italian girls and orders him not to bring Clara home again. On Sunday morning, Katherine comes to move in with Marty & his mother, because her own son and daughter-in-law have thrown her out. That son is so furious with his wife that he yells at Marty, "You're single and you've got no responsibilities. Keep it that way!"
Marty's friends gather at his place for lunch and tell him they thought Clara was far too plain to be worth dating. One of them even compares her to a woman in a porn magazine as proof. Swayed by all this negativity, Marty doesn't call Clara when he said he would. The audience gets to see Clara sitting home by the phone, in tears.
Hours later, however, his friends are trying to decide what to do that night. As they bicker over whether to go looking for women on 73rd St.*** or head to Union City for a burlesque, Marty has a sudden realization: "You don't like her, my mother don't like her, she's a dog and I'm a fat, ugly man! Well, all I know is I had a good time last night! You don't like her? That's too bad!" He runs inside to a pay phone and calls Clara. The end.
*In 1950, the average first-time groom was 22.8 years old.
** $48 in 2019 dollars.
*** 73rd Street was a red-light district at the time.
I hate to contradict the internet hive-mind, but as Bryan says, "those voters have much more patience for movies than I do...and I liked Primer."
I won't denigrate the cinematography of Gone With the Wind, nor its costume design, nor even its direction. But story-wise, it simply doesn't hold up. Scarlett O'Hara comes across as a villain protagonist with a far less compelling arc than any of her supporting characters. Why does Mammy love the woman who formerly owned her, but hate Rhett for breaking social traditions? I'd love to know, but the movie doesn't even bother to ask the question, let alone answer it.
Marty, on the other hand, blew me away with how relatable it is. I'm dying to see a remake where a chubby blue-collar veteran consoles a homely woman who just got stood up by her Tinder date. But he's his family's go-to babysitter/elder-care provider, and she's got an up-and-coming STEM career. He's forced to ask his nude-swapping bros a tough question: Should he text her back, or not? They could even keep the setting and the religious angle, although they might have to change the ethnicity to keep up with the modern Bronx.
The idea that societal expectations can get in the way of true connection resonated in the baby-booming quick-marrying 1950s, and it still resonates in the left-swiping hookup world of today. For that reason, we are breaking with the crowd and advancing Marty to the next round.
Old Hollywood Continued:
Gone With the Wind (1939) vs. Marty (1954)
First Contestant
Gone With the Wind is the longest Best Picture winner, the record-holder for the most-watched American movie of all time, and winner of 8 competitive Oscars in addition to two honorary ones. It is also, in my opinion, not worth half the hype it has. But here goes.The plot of Gone With the Wind is four hours long, and goes something like this: a spoiled brat named Scarlett is growing up on an antebellum Georgia plantation, surrounded by slaves who seem downright happy to be there.
She is in love with a man, Ashley, who doesn't love her back. So naturally she marries his fiancee's brother to make him jealous, which doesn't work. Then the Civil War breaks out. Her first husband dies off-screen. Scarlett therefore moves to Atlanta to live-with-slash-attempt-to-undermine her sister-in-law, Ashley's wife, Melanie.
Melanie is a thoroughly sweet, decent woman who thinks the best of Scarlett, although Scarlett most certainly doesn't deserve that much credit. They become friends as they work together to support the glorious Confederate cause. Meanwhile, the smuggler Rhett Butler falls for Scarlett, but she repeatedly rejects him because she's still carrying a torch for Ashley - her newfound bestie's husband, mind you! Ashley continues to reject her, for obvious reasons, although on Christmas 1863 he does kiss her while asking her to take care of his newly-pregnant wife.
Melanie goes into labor with Ashley's child at the same time that the Confederates lose the Battle of Atlanta and decide to burn the city down on their way out. (In real life, there was a 2-month gap between the battle and the burning, so presumably she was in labor for a very long time.) Scarlett delivers the baby and then runs to Rhett for help getting herself, Melanie, the baby, and their slave Prissy, home to her plantation.
Unfortunately, the plantation has been ransacked, Scarlett's mother has died, both her sisters are sick, her father has lost his mind, and of all their slaves, only Mammy and Porky are still hanging around. (Technically, those two are freedmen, but the movie never mentions as much - they continue to obey Scarlett and treat her like family, just like good loyal slaljklasfj - oh, sorry, I can't type when I'm rolling my eyes.) Anyway. Scarlett dramatically vows that she'll never go hungry again, and the movie breaks for intermission.
You read that right - we're only halfway through this plot.
To speed it up, I'll summarize Act II: Scarlett, Melanie, and Mammy defend and rebuild the plantation as best they can, which includes murdering a Union deserter. Scarlett tricks her sister's fiance into marrying her because she needs his money. Some years later that husband gets killed while carrying out an attack against the camp of freedmen. Fortunately, Rhett manages to help the white supremacists escape murder charges by arranging for all of them to confess to solicitation of prostitution, instead. This brilliant strategic move causes Scarlett to fall in love with Rhett and marry him. They have a baby, she decides she doesn't want more babies, he rapes her in a scene that's played as romantic, and she miscarries the resulting pregnancy because
In short, it's a film about narcissists and abusers being awful to each other until they all die. This movie has record-holding viewership, y'all.
Strangely enough, despite the rampant racist undertones in the plot, Gone With the Wind did strike one tiny blow for civil rights in this country. When Hattie McDaniel was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Scarlett's Mammy/moral compass, the ceremony was in a segregated venue. MGM pressured the Academy to allow an exception, and so Ms. McDaniel and her escort became the first two black people allowed to attend the Oscars. She also became the first black actress to win an Oscar. (The second, Whoopi Goldberg, won in 1990, aka half-a-damn-century-later.)
 |
| Pictured: a woman who deserved better material. |
Second Contestant
Marty is the shortest Best Picture ever, clocking in at just 91 minutes, more than 2 hours shorter than Gone With the Wind. It might also be the first movie ever adapted from a TV show, depending on your definition of "TV show," because the script originated as a play that was performed and broadcast live on NBC in 1953. The main characters are two nice people with bad luck in love who find each other and must decide whether to give romance one more chance, or not.In short, this is the polar opposite of Gone With the Wind.
Marty is a Bronx-based Catholic butcher who's been looking for a woman "every Saturday night of my life." But he's not terribly good-looking or successful, and can't seem to hit it off with anyone in particular. At 34*, he's still single. His elderly Italian mother just can't understand it - all of his siblings and cousins are married, so why can't he find somebody? His friend circle is made up of other single men, but most of them are only looking for
Finally, one Saturday night Marty finds himself in a weird situation at a dance hall: a man comes up and offers him $5** to take his date home so that he can hook up with someone prettier. Marty is shocked and says, "You can't just walk out on a girl like that!" But the man next to him accepts the money. The woman, Clara, sees right through the ruse, hollers at her date, and then runs onto the fire escape in tears. Marty goes to see if she's all right...and they instantly hit it off.
Most of the rest of the run-time is devoted to their Saturday night. They dance, they go for coffee, they walk around the neighborhood, and they talk about everything - their previous struggles with depression, their careers (she's a science teacher considering an offer to be a department head, he's trying to decide whether to buy his own butcher shop), and the pain of being alone in a world built for couples. By the end of the night, he's introduced her to his mother and promised to call her the very next day after Mass.
As luck would have it, though, nobody else likes Clara. Marty's mother is distracted by her sister Katherine's troubles - a daughter-in-law she can't get along with - and comes to the rather absurd conclusion that, if Marty gets married, she'll end up as the hated mother-in-law instead of the beloved mother. So she tells him she doesn't like him dating non-Italian girls and orders him not to bring Clara home again. On Sunday morning, Katherine comes to move in with Marty & his mother, because her own son and daughter-in-law have thrown her out. That son is so furious with his wife that he yells at Marty, "You're single and you've got no responsibilities. Keep it that way!"
Marty's friends gather at his place for lunch and tell him they thought Clara was far too plain to be worth dating. One of them even compares her to a woman in a porn magazine as proof. Swayed by all this negativity, Marty doesn't call Clara when he said he would. The audience gets to see Clara sitting home by the phone, in tears.
Hours later, however, his friends are trying to decide what to do that night. As they bicker over whether to go looking for women on 73rd St.*** or head to Union City for a burlesque, Marty has a sudden realization: "You don't like her, my mother don't like her, she's a dog and I'm a fat, ugly man! Well, all I know is I had a good time last night! You don't like her? That's too bad!" He runs inside to a pay phone and calls Clara. The end.
*In 1950, the average first-time groom was 22.8 years old.
** $48 in 2019 dollars.
*** 73rd Street was a red-light district at the time.
Our Verdict: Marty
This was a particularly interesting match-up because, when EW first ran this poll, the internet picked Gone with the Wind as the greatest Best Picture of all time.I hate to contradict the internet hive-mind, but as Bryan says, "those voters have much more patience for movies than I do...and I liked Primer."
I won't denigrate the cinematography of Gone With the Wind, nor its costume design, nor even its direction. But story-wise, it simply doesn't hold up. Scarlett O'Hara comes across as a villain protagonist with a far less compelling arc than any of her supporting characters. Why does Mammy love the woman who formerly owned her, but hate Rhett for breaking social traditions? I'd love to know, but the movie doesn't even bother to ask the question, let alone answer it.
Marty, on the other hand, blew me away with how relatable it is. I'm dying to see a remake where a chubby blue-collar veteran consoles a homely woman who just got stood up by her Tinder date. But he's his family's go-to babysitter/elder-care provider, and she's got an up-and-coming STEM career. He's forced to ask his nude-swapping bros a tough question: Should he text her back, or not? They could even keep the setting and the religious angle, although they might have to change the ethnicity to keep up with the modern Bronx.
The idea that societal expectations can get in the way of true connection resonated in the baby-booming quick-marrying 1950s, and it still resonates in the left-swiping hookup world of today. For that reason, we are breaking with the crowd and advancing Marty to the next round.
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