I think it was a wise decision to change the reason why Rhett was in jail from killing a black man for insulting a white woman in the book to the much more vague “trumped up charge”.
I wonder what the process was? Were there meetings about it? Was it a no-brainer for the screenwriter that it be changed?
I read the book after seeing the movie and I was shocked to discover why Rhett was in jail.
I never read the book, but I have a thought about Rhett.
Today, "enlightened" people everywhere love to say that GWTW is a racist movie, but I gotta tell you, it was my grandmother's favorite film (black woman born in the late 1800s). She loved how the white folks actually respected Mammy and how she was the strongest and most moral (along with Melanie) character in the movie. Today, enlightened people think it was racist to show Mammy that way but I think the studio was trying to make a movie that showed black people in the most human way up until that point. How Mitchell felt I don't have a clue, but saying a white family couldn't possibly be good to their slaves (other than owning them of course) is racist.
They also wanted Rhett to be a hero and while a character like Rhett in 1860s America might have actually killed a black man for merely insulting a white woman, they didn't want this in a 1930s movie and I'm glad they didn't include it. I agree with you that it was a wise decision because regardless of how the book was, the movie was a classic as is. While it might not have been inaccurate for Rhett to do this, it doesn't follow that *every* man like Butler would have.
GWTW was one of the few "white" movies of that Hollywood era that featured black characters that weren't simple buffoons but were featured as real human beings with good character (remember Big Sam saved Scarlett from the white trash who were attacking her).
Sure, Prissy was shown as a sniveler, but she might have been the "worse" black character and really, she wasn't bad at all - just immature.
I tell people all the time Mammy is the movie's moral center (and possibly main protagonist). She is always right and knows when and how people screw up.
IMO, Rhett is the second most decent main character (Mammy first) and he spends the entire moving trying to earn her respect.
I'm no fan of Melanie; she's too weak for me (room for debate, I know). Scarlett is a text-book sociopath. Ashley is a pathetic defeatist. The others are as dumb as Rhett tells them in the beginning.
To one of your points, the movie portrays white trash accurately.
I thought in the movie, Rhett wasn't in jail. He was a prisoner of war.
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