Running to nearly four hours and boasting at least three directors, this epic American Civil War romantic drama is more of a symbol of the Hollywood studio system than a mere movie. Forever dividing critics, it will remain an audience favourite for all time. A war picture with a beating female heart, thanks to the bestselling source novel by Margaret Mitchell, it was, in 1939, the most expensive film ever made: $4 million, and the money is up there on the screen in impressive set pieces such as the burning of Atlanta and the shot where the camera pulls back to reveal a vast carpet of wounded Confederate soldiers. But the key is Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara, a wilful but resourceful southern heroine (designed to inspire women as America readied for the Second World War) who's destined to meet her match in Clark Gable's raffish Rhett Butler. Where's the slavery, you could ask. But this isn't a history lesson, it's a love story, and one of the best.

The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.