Gone With the Wind

In honour of the 70th Anniversary of Gone With the Wind, there was a screening last night at Atlanta's FOX Theatre - a movie palace whose aesthetic is part Arabian Nights, part Egyptomania, and all fabulous. Movies at the Fox are introduced with a performance on the cinema organ, "The Mighty Mo", played by a man wearing an entirely white suit, and accompanied by a player piano that rose out of the orchestra pit on an elevator. I liked the fact that the player piano was equipped with a chandelier, even though nobody is actually playing it, and therefore there is no need for a light source. Show biz!

The theatre was packed, and I was treated to the odd and somewhat awkward experience of watching what is an extremely dark and troubling Ur-text of the American South with an audience of Georgians. For example, Mammy got lots of laughs - and I mean, a lot of laughs. This made me uncomfortable, as it was hard to tell if the audience reaction was saying "Wow, check out Hattie McDaniel's nuanced performance" or "Ahhh, the good old days".

Another puzzling phenomenon was the large number of audience members taking flash photographs of the screen during the movie. They weren't photographing one another, but rather, they were trying to get a shot of their favourite shots in the movie. This is weird, no? I felt like shouting "It's called a DVD! Look into it!" Of course, it added a certain drama to the screening, as "I'll never be hungry again" and "...I don't give a damn" were punctuated by a veritable lightning storm of flashes.