Gone With the Wind (1936) provides excellent background on the changing face of the South, a few generations earlier, but we see something of Tara Plantation in Belle Reve. Gone with the Wind also involves the themes of sexuality used as a weapon and of romantic illusion vs. hard confrontations with reality and death. Note that Vivien Leigh played Scarlett in the film version of 1939 and then played Blanche in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951.
Equus is another account of passion and the difficulty of understanding other people's passion, as well as madness and sexuality.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest provides a good examination of other kinds of madness,...
