Climbing the stairs with 'Gone with the wind'.

Climbing the stairs in Gone with the Wind

Gone with the wind is an iconic Hollywood film released in 1939 but set in the American civil war. It tackles the issue of slavery from a southern perspective. However, that is not the story. The story is about love and our desperate search for it. Scarlett O’Hara is a deeply passionate individual who searches for love and finds it in different places and in different men. We follow her journey as she encounters great joy and enormous sadness. I think there are times when we should dislike her, but somehow we just can’t. Her complicated relationship with Rhett Butler drives the film forward and produces some of the most memorable scenes in film history.

On watching more recently though I could see the real genius in the directing. There are clearly different levels to the meanings woven into this iconic story. The scenes unfold on top of each other and we are swept along with the drama of it all. The intensity builds until we can hardly stand it anymore and then, in an instant, it is gone….

This intelligent staging delves into a deeper level when we consider the staircases in the film. Large sweeping staircases that beg to be included in the pivotal scenes that help to create the drama that is, ‘Gone with the Wind.’ Beautiful staircases that, even empty, deserve to be mentioned. In a subconscious way we start to see these staircases as integral to the story. Scarlett moves so well on the stairs but then there is the fall that takes something so precious away. The stairs hide their face in shame. Scarlett sees Rhett for the first time when she is high on the stairs and he is at the bottom looking up. We get a sense of perspective here of the unobtainable - a clever addition to a seminal moment.

Perhaps one of the most gripping scenes is also the most controversial. Rhett carries a supposedly unwilling Scarlett upstairs. Her body is limp as he carries her and suddenly the stairs look like a mountain that he has to climb. The stairs become a metaphor for life. When life is progressing how the characters would hope they are going up the stairs. When there is conflict or discomfort they are descending. This can not be accidental and thus an additional meaning is cemented deep into the very soul of the story. At the end of the film the stairs make their final appearance and support the decision for Scarlett to return home.

In our own lives we walk up and down stairs all the time and never really notice them. Granted we do not all have the grand stairs that feature so well in Gone with the Wind but stairs do give us time to reflect. Maybe if Scarlett had made better use of those opportunities she had to reflect she would have realised the significance of Rhett Butler. He was right there, in front of her and she still didn’t see him. She didn’t see what we all saw until it was too late. We all blamed her for that but I can’t help thinking that if the stairs had just spoken just a little louder everything would have been different. There again, so would ‘Gone with the wind’ and I am not sure we would want it any other way. It was just perfect the way it was.