by Annalou Mack

Created on: April 24, 2008   Last Updated: December 06, 2011

There are different ways of writing effective reviews for movies, books and other things. It might be a brief summary or a full blown review. Each has its own characteristics.

Summary
A summary is a brief restatement of the main points of a movie or a book without giving details. It does not try to keep the main style or format of the original. Summaries are concise while giving the most important parts of the piece being summarized.

Sample Summary
Gone with the Wind was an epic film adapted from the 1937 Pulitzer Prize winning book by Margaret Mitchell. Fittingly, since this and the surrounding area is the setting of the movie, it was released in Atlanta, Georgia in December, 1939. Immediately it was a box-office hit and has remained a favorite to the present time.

The movie shows the saga of one young woman of the South during and following the Civil War. The central figure in the movie is Scarlett O'Hara, played by Vivien Leigh, who is selfish, manipulative, egotistical, yet lovable. At the beginning she is still living on Tara, the family's giant plantation. We meet her Irish father, Gerald O'Hara, played by Thomas Mitchell, who tells her that Tara will someday be hers. Later she remembers her father's words telling her that, "land's the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts."

Scarlett is rebuffed by Ashley Wilkes,(played by Leslie Howard) a neighboring plantation owner's son, who marries Melanie Hamilton (played by Olivia de Havilland). In response, Scarlett marries Melanie's brother, Charles, whom she does not love.

Not far into the film, the men all go off to War saying it will be short because the North doesn't know how to fight and besides the Southerners are fighting for their land. Charles dies shortly after of pneumonia before ever reaching the battlefront. Scarlett laments, "I'm too young to be a widow," and objects to wearing the black mourning clothes in memory of her deceased husband.

Rhett Butler, played by Clark Gable, is a cynical, blunt, intelligent rogue who falls in love with Scarlett. Throughout most of the film, including a couple more marriages, Scarlett maintains what she thinks is love for Ashley. Not until it is too late does she realize that she actually loves her husband, Rhett. By this time Rhett has tired of her pouting, high-tempered and strong-willed ways and leaves her. In the final scene when Scarlett learns that Rhett is leaving, she asks him,

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