7. Gone with the Wind (1939)
A multi-Oscar award winning epic that's as timeless and brilliant as it is now than when it was in the 1930s - the adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's famous novel follows the lives of the O'Hara family, rich white landowners in the South at the time of the American Civil War. However, their lives are irrevocably changed as they endure the brunt of the war as we follow them as several decades. The worrying morality lies with the fates of our protagonists - with Scarlett, we're supposed to emphasise with her, despite the fact that she's conniving, deceitful, callous, cold and a woman for whom the pursuit of her 'one true love' leaves plenty of devastation in her wake. Admittedly she becomes more sympathetic as the film goes on as Scarlett endures many tragedies in her life, but she endures, her iciness thawing only slightly. Her counterpart Melanie on the other hand does not - Melanie being the ideal Southern woman and arguably the strongest character in both book and film, she survives illness, disease and disrepute and rises above it to maintain both her standing and her sweet, wholesome nature. Melanie however dies of sickness towards the end of the film, we the viewers uncomfortably aware of her ignorance regarding her husband Ashley's feelings towards Scarlett. The most horrifying thing? Rhett, Scarlett's tempestuous true love, rapes her in a drunken rage. And this apparently 'cures' her - in the next scene, she's happy and singing. The moral complications of this are undeniably and a little sickening to say the least, if indicative of the gender norms and standards expected. The film seems to suggest that goodness is brief and snuffed out, particularly in people - in films we're often drawn to dark characters and even darker situations, but the lack of a prevailing goodness in the film (embodied by the selfless Melanie) suggests that even more so, particular from a time that had just experienced one global conflict and was on the edge of another one.