Some of the campiest parts might, and these turn out to involve not Scarlett or Mammy or even Prissy, but Ashley and Melanie. Leslie Howard as Ashley is just plain bad I think, perhaps because he has the most wooden-Victorian lines--I love your passion for life, Scarlett, but a Wilkes cannot think only of his own desires, etc. He also stands for a supposedly liberal Southern position that even in 1939 would have been hard to take seriously--that he would have freed his slaves when his father died. Freed them to do what? Ashley is of course supposed to be an etiolated branch, but this seems to drain Howard, who was the only other real actor besides Leigh in the cast. Clark Gable's more limited star acting comes off much better in a movie like this. He gets us on his side just by scoffing at the notion of "gentleman," which the movie's beloved vanished South is otherwise so invested in.

Olivia de Havilland is actually good as Melanie who seems like a sweet woman rather than just some phony ideal of the moviemakers. We believe in her generosity when she accepts a donation from the madam Belle Watling and most movingly when she says she feeds Union soldiers hoping that in the North some woman is feeding Ashley. De Havilland also makes seamless transitions to the moments when Melanie lies or abets Scarlett in concealing and profiting from a murder. What makes her a hoot is that she's wrong when she's generous to "our darling Scarlett," who is, after all, trying to steal her husband. The movie never gives an account of whether Melanie knows all and forgives all, maybe out of Christian charity, or has some other reason for holding to a vision of Scarlett that's better than reality, or is just dense, her head full of buttercream. All this said, the moment when Melanie spots Ashley coming home is extremely effective, one in the long line of homecomings in American movies, such as The Birth of a Nation, Hallelujah! (1929), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Sounder (1972), that tie black and white experience together by the commonality of human bonds.

Many critics avoid writing about Gone With the Wind because it's so central to the mythology of the supposedly golden age of Hollywood. You don't want people to think that what you write about it is how your work should be judged, nor do you want to overstate its importance as an example of the art of moviemaking. And at some level it doesn't make much difference what you say--if you just get people to watch it you probably don't have to tell them how to enjoy it.