It would seem that Gone With the Wind, written by a woman, concerned with a woman, and read by millions of women all over the world, is working out o… - C. A. Lejeune

" "

It would seem that Gone With the Wind, written by a woman, concerned with a woman, and read by millions of women all over the world, is working out on form. That is to say, it is primarily a woman's picture.
I say that advisedly, not to suggest that men won't like it, but because I am so sure that women will. It may not be a great, significant picture, with a strong, central theme, but I don't honestly believe that women care so much about great, significant pictures with strong, central themes. What they prefer, and what they will get in Gone With the Wind is a vivid account of personal and intimate details of this meeting and that quarrel; [life] seen not broadly, in perspective, but urgently, from day to day, as if they were living it themselves. Women are only dimly concerned with the meaning of what is happening in the world, but passionately concerned with the effect of what is happening on So-and-So. The American Civil War. the abolition of slavery, the burning of a city, the end of a social order, even the birth of a nation, would hardly in themselves justify the film's three hours and forty minutes of running-time. But in order to discover what happened to Scarlett O'Hara, to Melanie. to Rhett Butler, to the black mammy, to Scarlett's baby, during these events, most women will sit through this enormous picture without a murmur.
Curiously enough, the dominant feminine interest in the picture has worked through even to the acting. The best performances are all women's.

English
Collect this quote

About C. A. Lejeune

Caroline Alice Lejeune (27 March 1897 – 31 March 1973) was a British writer remembered as The Observers film critic from 1928 to 1960. She was among the earliest newspaper film critics in Britain, and one of the first British women in the profession. She formed a friendship early in her career with Alfred Hitchcock, "when he was writing and ornamenting sub-titles for silent pictures," as she later wrote.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Caroline Alice Lejeune C.A. L. Mrs. Edward Roffe Thompson Caroline Lejeune C.A. Lejeune C(aroline) A(nne) Lejeune
Enhance Your Quote Experience

Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by C. A. Lejeune

From the imaginative point of view, the Fellini is a masterpiece of its kind. I hasten to add that it is a very dreadful kind.
I should not like to send anyone to see the picture unprepared. [In] La Dolce Vita ... [s]ome of the scenes are the most sickening exhibitions of human degradation and depravity ever shown on a public screen. They are intended to he so, for Fellini is a rebel who feels bitterly about the spurious sweetness of the dolce vita.
The leading character is a gossip-writer on a scandal sheet ... smelling out sensation. Wherever the scent is rankest, there he goes, with a pack, of other velping photographers at his heels. The wildest of wild orgies, a fake miracle, suicide following a father's murder of his sleeping children, the public striptease of a middle-aged woman to celebrate the annulment of her marriage, all these find our hero in attendance.
Why should anybody choose see it? Because it is a work of deep imagination, signed with an artist's individual hand. The black-and-white photography is masterly. Everything Fellini's camera touches springs to urgent life. He can pour life suddenly Into an empty street, illumine some hitherto unnoticed figure and make it live and breathe. No comer of the huge screen is ever wasted. Space left blank is as deliberately significant as space filled.

Go Premium

Support Quotewise while enjoying an ad-free experience and premium features.

View Plans
[On the new CinemaScope process] The effect produced on the viewer is to make him feel he is sitting inside a monster pillar-box looking out through the slot at a world in the rough proportions of a dachshund.
For views of processions, or wide horizontal sweeps of plain or water this does not work out badly, but it comes hard-on actors who have to 'exchange confidences from the opposite, sides of a proscenium arch.

Loading...