There's box sets, and then there's this 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition Gone With the Wind set, which is just insane. In a good way, of course. This isn't for someone who doesn't already know and love the movie, so I'm not even going to bother reviewing the film. Either you know it and you adore it (or you hate it, in which case, you're not gonna buy this anyway), or you've never seen it, in which case, for pete's sake, rent it before you invest in this treasure chest of a set.

You open the box, and there's a nice little picture book on top: it contains lots of lovely photos and production sketches from the flick. Under that are replicas of memos and letters and telegrams from the film's production, such as the one in which producer David O. Selznick reveals his three choices for the role of Rhett Butler: Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and Erol [sic] Flynn. Then there's a CD with selections from the soundtrack, a little over half an hour's worth of music.

Then comes the real stuff: two folders of DVDs. In the first, there's the movie, on two discs, with both the original mono soundtrack and a remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 version, plus audio commentary by historian Rudy Behlmer. This is hilariously, obsessively nerdy, down to what drugs everyone was on to help them get through the production -- where Behlmer found this info, I dunno, but it does put a whole new spin on the flick. No wonder Rhett Butler didn't give a damn about anything, or why Scarlett O'Hara was so hungry: she had the munchies.

The second folder contains three discs. Disc 1, "About the Movie," includes the 1988 feature-length doc The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind, narrated by Christopher Plummer -- guess what kind of payoff was required to get Clark Gable on board? Best of all is the short "The Old South," which Warner Bros. produced to prepare 1930s audiences for the setting of the film; it's an interesting artifact of Hollywood's -- and America's -- racism at the time (the Great Depression, that is, not the Civil War era). Disc 2, "About the Cast," is more material that's been around for a while but is still intriguing, including an elderly Olivia de Havilland's reflections on playing Melanie, and profiles of Gable and Vivien Leigh. Disc 3, "New Celebratory 70th Anniversary Extras," is the best. Here, there's a new, really awesome feature-length documentary narrated by Kenneth Branagh about 1939, that pinnacle year of Hollywood's Golden Age, plus the hilariously catty 1980 TV film Moviola: The Scarlett O'Hara War, starring Tony Curtis as Selznick, Sharon Gless as Carole Lombard, some nobody as Gable, and Morgan Brittany as Leigh (Brittany went on to do six years on Dallas after this).

I could imagine Rhett running blockades to bring copies of this to the entertainment-starved people of Atlanta. Or maybe Scarlett could make a hat out of the box. Anyway, it's good stuff.

The 70th Anniversary Collection of Gone with the Wind is available now from Warner Home Video.

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MaryAnn Johanson never goes hungry at FlickFilosopher.com. (email me)

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