Reviews

I've seen the film many times, have always enjoyed it. But I've been reading the book for the first time. It's a very long novel, and you have to stay with it if you want to see the ending. It's a good read, but Margaret Mitchell, former newspaper reporter, is very thorough in her description of both Southern culture and the changes that the Civil War brought to it. It's the size of the book that was the biggest challenge for David O Selznick. Not what parts to film, but which parts to leave out. So many characters that appeared in the book couldn't be introduced in the movie without extending the film's length to well over four hours. So he had Sidney Howard write the screenplay, then cut that down to a filmable length by hiring several more writers to further pare the script, and was still rewriting it himself while it was being filmed. Selznick was close to running out of money, so he asked his angel, millionaire Jock Whitney, to loan him enough to finish the film. The film was finally completed and edited, then was test-marketed at a theatre not far from LA. The viewers were excited about having seen it and said so on their preview cards, which allowed Selznick to rest easy, knowing he had a hit on his hands.

If you wish to see this epic, get the unrated, uncut version. This movie would merely be dopey in the sanitized version. Seeing the whole enchilada just enlarges the stupidity of this film, instead of making it gross. Ursula Undress- er- Andress- must have not flashed her pecs in a while, which is why she is in this movie. Stacy Keach must have needed the money. There is no other reason for them to be in this awful waste of celluloid.

Miklos Rosza's score for this film was one of the finest and most memorable ever. One of the reasons I find it so memorable is because he borrowed some phrases from a previous score. I hear several snippets that remind me of his score from "Thief of Baghdad." That's the film that began in England, but was moved to La-La land because the Germans kept blowing up Alexander Korda's studio. Rosza finished scoring this film, then had himself a long career as a Hollywood film composer, winning an Oscar for the score for this film.

William Peter Blatty, to refresh your memory, wrote the book and screenplay for one of the scariest movies ever, "The Exorcist." His script for "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home" isn't as scary- but it's close. Watching usually down-to-earth TV actors yelling and screaming at one another doesn't work when they all do it at once. At least, that's how it sounds. It's probably this film, along with the other clunkers he's written scripts for ("What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?," "Darling Lili") that made him write "The Exorcist"- as penance for all those sins he committed in the name of entertainment.