<P> Sarris concedes that despite its artistic failings, the film does hold a mandate around the world as the "single most beloved entertainment ever produced". Judith Crist observes that, kitsch aside, the film is "undoubtedly still the best and most durable piece of popular entertainment to have come off the Hollywood assembly lines", the product of a showman with "taste and intelligence". Schlesinger notes that the first half of the film does have a "sweep and vigor" that aspire to its epic theme, but--finding agreement with the film's contemporary criticisms--the personal lives take over in the second half, and it ends up losing its theme in unconvincing sentimentality . Kauffmann also finds interesting parallels with The Godfather, which had just replaced Gone with the Wind as the highest - grosser at the time: both were produced from "ultra-American" best - selling novels, both live within codes of honor that are romanticized, and both in essence offer cultural fabrication or revisionism . </P> <P> The critical perception of the film has shifted in the intervening years, which resulted in it being ranked 235th in Sight & Sound's prestigious decennial critics poll in 2012, and in 2015 sixty - two international film critics polled by the BBC voted it the 97th best American film . </P> <P> The film has featured in several high - profile industry polls: in 1977 it was voted the most popular film by the American Film Institute (AFI), in a poll of the organization's membership; the AFI also ranked the film fourth on its "100 Greatest Movies" list in 1998, with it slipping down to sixth place in the tenth anniversary edition in 2007 . Film directors ranked it 322nd in the 2012 edition of the decennial Sight & Sound poll, and in 2016 it was selected as the ninth best "directorial achievement" in a Directors Guild of America members poll . In 2014, it placed fifteenth in an extensive poll undertaken by The Hollywood Reporter, which ballotted every studio, agency, publicity firm and production house in the Hollywood region . Gone with the Wind was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress in 1989 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". </P> <P> Gone with the Wind has been criticized as having perpetuated Civil War myths and black stereotypes . David Reynolds writes that "The white women are elegant, their menfolk noble or at least dashing . And, in the background, the black slaves are mostly dutiful and content, clearly incapable of an independent existence ." Reynolds likened Gone with the Wind to The Birth of a Nation and other re-imaginings of the South during the era of segregation, in which white Southerners are portrayed as defending traditional values and the issue of slavery is largely ignored . The film has been described as a "regression" that promotes the myth of the black rapist and the honourable and defensive role of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, and as a "social propaganda" film offering a "white supremacist" view of the past . From 1972 to 1996, the Atlanta Historical Society held a number of Gone with the Wind exhibits, among them a 1994 exhibit titled, "Disputed Territories: Gone with the Wind and Southern Myths". One of the questions explored by the exhibit was "How True to Life Were the Slaves in GWTW?" This section showed slave experiences were diverse and concluded that the "happy darky" was a myth, as was the belief that all slaves experienced violence and brutality . </P>

Who created or appeared in gone with the wind