A Cover Poster Of The 1939 Gone With The Wind Featuring Couple Character Scarlett O’hara And Rhett Butler. Photo taken by sb.sanan from LINK

Pre-war cinema has something about it that is not seen in subsequent eras – greatness, novelty and a desire to evolve cinematography into something bigger than entertainment – a feeling. Here are some examples of films from this period that did just that.

📽️  „Gone with the Wind” 📽️  

We must begin with the most momentous film of the 20th century – „Gone with the Wind.” An adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s 1939 novel. It tells the story of the South, from the last days of the antebellum, Civil War and the Reconstruction period. The main character is an innocent young girl, a planter’s daughter, used to comforts – Scarlett O’Hara (played by Vivien Leigh), whose present world is about to collapse. In addition to Scarlett, timeless characters include her nanny Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) and her other half – Rhett Butler (Clark Gabe) and others. Another timeless realm is the costumes which have been faithfully recreated to match those used during the time close to the Civil War era, and all of this was  researched without the help of the internet. The film remains to this day the highest grossing film ever adjusted for inflation. On its first release, 200 million tickets of the film were sold in America, compared to the US population of 130 million at the time. It remains popular to this day. 

📽️ „Wizard of Oz” 📽️

Another timeless film is Wizard of Oz, an adaptation of L.Frank Baum’s book. The character of Dorothy played by Judy Garland is still synonymous with childhood innocence, and some of cinema’s most iconic scenes include Dorothy waking up in the land of Oz when the film transitions from sepia to colour or her singing „Somewhere over the Rainbow” on her farm in Kansas. The special effects were unparalleled, especially in the era before CGI and one wonders how they have done it.

📽️ „Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”  📽️

The only animated film on this list, but deservedly so. Until then, animated films usually lasted from a few minutes to a maximum of a dozen minutes. In 1937, however, Walt Disney decided to change this and produced a full-length animated film based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm – Snow White. The result was an immersion of fantasy that audiences had never experienced before, the birth of the cinematic juggernaut and a series of animated films that shaped the childhood of practically everyone. Until The Lion King from the same studio, Snow White was the highest grossing animated film for more than half a century. 

📽️ „Alexander Nevsky”  📽️

The only non-American film on this list, but it perfectly illustrates pre-war cinema’s willingness to innovate and do something no one had dared to do before. This Soviet film tells the story of the Russian national hero Alexander Nevsky, who cleverly maneuvered between the powers around Russian Principalities. The film tells of his episode in which he fought a war against the Livonian Order and the legendary Battle on Ice on Lake Peipus. The film is immortalised by its legendary soundtrack and for recording the first large-scale battle in the history of cinema – which inspired countless other movie battles – from Lord of the Rings to Star Wars. 

📽️2024/2025 © Adrian Świątek, Logistyka, II rok, SS,  Akademia Nauk Stosowanych w Koninie