Oh, my. Nice write-up, ER. Know that GWTW already has a place on my shelf.

For background, for panoramic beauty, complexity, grace and style, for sub-plots seen in these backdrops, be they black-n-white or color, the motion pictures that come immediately to mind for any aspiring filmmaker to watch and study would simply have to include:

W. Somerset Maugham's masterpiece-come-to-film "The Razor's Edge," with Tyrone Power
W. Somerset Maugham's masterpiece-come-again-to-film "The Razor's Edge," with Bill Murray
Margaret Mitchell's masterpiece-come-to-film "Gone with the Wind," with Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh
Rudolph Erich Raspe's masterpiece-come-to-film "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," with John Neville
Film writer John W. Cunningham's "High Noon," with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly
L. Frank Baum's masterpiece-come-to-film "The Wizard of Oz," with Judy Garland and an excellent supporting cast

For simple complexity of story and proper flow, we have again:

"The Razor's Edge" (1946)
"The Razor's Edge" (1984)
"Gone with the Wind" (1939)
"The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" (1988)
"High Noon" (1952)
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939)

...but also Spencer Tracy's:

"The Mountain," (1956) here with a very young Robert Wagner
"The Old Man and the Sea" (1958)
"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," (1963) with a very large and very funny supporting cast.

For GWTW, though, all would have been lost, but for a broken leg:
As it had been a favorite of my wife's, I had seen Gone with the Wind many times over the years, but it was TMC that raised my conscious experience with the film, by providing those little background stories they like to include.

It seems the author, Margaret Mitchell, did not want to publish her work at all, insisting it was just a nice, personal story of her own, and no one would be really all that interested. Being laid up with a compound leg fracture for a few months, the manuscript became her constant companion. In the 1930s, this became her pastime, her GameBoy or X-Box if you will. It was a created world, all her own, one she could build and destroy at leisure, twist and rewrite as she pleased.

Eventually, replacing a word here or there became a bit of a bore. She was back on her feet and doing things again, but was always drawn back to it, for some inane little correction here or there. Her friends, concerned with this preoccupation, told her she had to get rid of the damned thing, and the best way to do that was to simply have it published.

Well -- she did just that.