You know you’ve made a movie right if it can never be made again. That’s not to say foolish people won’t try to do so (witness the recent flop of a remake of Ben-Hur). But, really, will we ever see another Casablanca, The Godfather, Titanic, or The Lord of the Rings? My bet is no. Likewise with this week’s Best Picture winner, Gone with the Wind (1939, Selznik International Pictures). Arguably, this is our first BP for which we can truly say with any confidence that it will never be remade. This is a mountain of a movie, a magnificent feat of cinema, a true privilege to watch.

The grandest, most expensive sound film to date at the time of its release in 1939 (at approximately $4 million in production costs), Gone with the Wind still holds the highest domestic gross (when adjusted for inflation) at a staggering $1,685,052,200 (according to Business Insider). Does that make it the greatest movie of all time? There are more than a few folks out there who say yes.

My absolute favorite scene from Gone with the Wind

The first movie in color to win Best Picture, the film also smashed Academy Award precedents with 13 nominations and 8 wins in the competitive categories, along with 2 special Oscar awards, a feat unmatched for 20 years until 1959’s Ben-Hur won 11 Oscars, which is incidentally the current record (which Ben-Hur shares with two other films—any guesses what those are? Here’s a probably unhelpful hint, unless you know me well: They are two of my favorites!). Gone with the Wind won Academy Awards for Cinematography (Color), Film Editing, Art Direction, Writing (Screenplay), Directing, Actress (Vivien Leigh), Actress in a Supporting Role (Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to be nominated and to win an Academy Award), and Outstanding Production. The categories for which the film’s nominees did not win are rather surprising (as they were in 1940 as well): Special Effects, Sound Recording, Music (Original Score), Actor (Clark Gable), and Actress in a Supporting Role (Olivia de Havilland). I have a hard time especially with the fact that such an iconic score (which is stuck in my head as I write this) was not rewarded by the Academy voters; but when I think of the film that beat out Gone with the Wind for best original score—The Wizard of Oz—I’m a little placated. 1939 was a doozy of a year for film. Had Gone with the Wind not been released in 1939, we could easily have been talking about one of a number of that year’s notable films as this week’s BP. In addition to The Wizard of Oz, 1939 saw the release of Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Wuthering Heights; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Stagecoach; and Ninotchka, among others.

Aside from churning out brilliant movies, 1939 itself was a fascinating year. As we talked about last week with You Can’t Take It with You, the end of the decade of the 1930s brought both positives and negatives—namely, the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II. In fact, when Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, France and Britain had only been at war with Germany for a little over three months. Just as Gone with the Wind opens on the lovely day of the party at the Wilkes’ plantation during which the men are full of excitement and eagerness for the start of the Civil War, so also was the world preoccupied with war when Gone with the Wind was first seen by moviegoers—although, with less optimism. After the horrors of World War I, another war between the Allies and a German-led coalition was not welcomed gladly by most. WWII was a very grim undertaking for the Allies as they finally responded to Hitler’s aggression in Europe and the darkness of what would come to be known as the Holocaust. Just as WWII was one of those “times that try men’s souls,” as Thomas Paine wrote, so also was the Civil War which consumes the characters and events of Gone with the Wind.

Gone with the Wind’s casting was downright brilliant. Here, Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara

Margaret Mitchell, the fledgling author who penned the 1,037-page Pulitzer-winning novel Gone with the Wind, was no stranger to the concept of war-obsession and how war influences both nations geographically and people psychologically. Born and raised in Atlanta (where her ancestors had lived before there was even a city there), Mitchell’s father and brother, both attorneys, were deeply knowledgeable about Georgia and Atlanta history—especially of that history during the Civil War. In an interview Mitchell gave in 1936, a few days after the publication of her novel, she relates how when she was a child her parents took her to visit old relatives and friends on Sunday afternoons (The entirety of this interview can be found at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/margaret-mitchell-american-rebel-interview-with-margaret-mitchell-from-1936/2011/). Little “Peggy” was placed on the laps of the elderly hosts and had to sit still and not speak while “the gathering spiritedly refought the Civil War.” She continues to explain the wild tales she heard those afternoons: “So I heard about fighting and wounds and the primitive way they were treated, how ladies nursed in hospitals, the way gangrene smelled, what substitutes were used for drugs and food and clothing when the blockade got too tight for these necessities to be brought in from abroad. I heard about the burning and looting of Atlanta and the way the refugees from the town crowded the roads and trains to Macon, and I heard about Reconstruction, too. In fact, I heard everything in the world except that the Confederates lost the war. When I was ten years old, it was a violent shock to learn that General Lee had been defeated. I didn’t believe it when I first heard it and I was indignant. I still find it hard to believe, so strong are childhood impressions.” Mitchell’s “childhood impressions” lent a reality to her novel that this week’s film also possesses—perhaps to an even greater extent than its book counterpart. For in its opening words about knights and ladies, montage of Southern landscapes, and epic music, Gone with the Wind captures a longing for a simpler past, for a rural and warm idyllic landscape in which chivalry and grace rule society—in other words, for a utopia that was both real and imagined at the same time, a mirror world to that of the pre-WWII era. Once the wars commenced—Civil War and World War II—both pre-war worlds would be lost, “gone with the wind.” And those of us who live after those wars can only know the antebellum worlds through visions like Gone with the Wind.

For more thoughts on Gone with the Wind and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend! For more on Margaret Mitchells’ life and tragic death, you can read her reprinted obituary here: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1108.html.