A week and a half ago a friend of mine and I went to see Warner's limited release of The Wizard of Oz in Imax 3D. I had heard it was a great 3D conversion and wanted to see it for myself. It was, but more on that later.
The theater had a decent crowd, including a lot of little kids. In fact, sitting next to us was a mother with two little ones no older than three or four years old I would guess. My friend surmised that it might have been the little ones' first time seeing the movie, a thought that is pretty cool. Looking back, I wish my first experience with Oz was in the movies.
It's a curious thing, however. When I was a kid, I turned against Oz. You see, though I religiously watched it for a few years, round about the time I was ten The Dukes of Hazzard was on and it was my favorite show. They took it off one Friday night for Oz and I got so mad that for years afterwards I refused to watch the movie. Funny thing is, I can't stand The Dukes of Hazzard now. Trying to watch it now, it feels like my brain will implode and my childhood will be ripped asunder. But Oz? I happily rediscovered it in my 20s.
It was at a theatrical showing, a one night only thing at a theater known as The Ritz (very classy theater in Philly, btw). It was a packed house. In fact, I was one of the last six people admitted. I ended up in the third row right by the wall. But as I watched the movie that night, I was blown away by what I saw. I finally got it. And I felt kinda stupid for turning against the movie fifteen years earlier, especially for something as awful as The Dukes. I'll say it now. As a kid, I had rotten taste in movies and TV for the most part. Rotten.
I've seen Oz twice on the big screen since then, the most recent being the Imax showing. I know some people are upset about this most recent release, calling it a desecration of a classic motion picture. It isn't, folks. The 3D, in fact, merely adds to the wonder of the movie. It's very well handled. Not overdone, but with some good layers of depth and a couple--but not too many--pop outs. In fact, if you didn't know the movie was shot flat, you might well mistake it for being a movie shot in 3D. Almost. As good as it looks--and it looks great--it does highlight one of the problems with 3D conversions. Which is that there isn't quite as much depth as one might get with a native shot 3D film. The biggest highlight of this problem is during Munchkinland. Apparently the computers used to convert these things can only break things down into so many layers and the munchkins go back further than that. On the other hand, they do manage to break some of the matte paintings into layers. So that's kinda neat, too.
Of course, the movie is still the movie. And the movie is one of those rare breeds: a near perfect movie. If you look back at the past 120 years or so of movies, there's not that many that truly are near perfect. Casablanca would be one. Singin' In The Rain might qualify. The Maltese Falcon--the Bogart version of course. Arguments might also be made for It's A Wonderful Life, Jaws, E.T., and the original Star Wars. Oz, however, may tower above them all.
Think about it for a moment. Is there anything inherently wrong with the movie? There isn't a bad performance in it. Every cast member is great, starting most importantly with Judy Garland as Dorothy. Shirley Temple lobbied hard to get the part of Dorothy and was the bigger star at the time, but I'm not convinced she would have worked. Judy brings a naturalness to the character. She doesn't actually seem to be acting, a feat that isn't always easy. I've seen her in other movies, but I really think this is her best performance ever. You really do feel for Dorothy during her journey. She makes you laugh and cry in all the right spots. That was the genius of Judy Garland. Nobody else--then or now--could do with this part what she does.
Of course, there's also her co-stars. Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr as the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion (respectively) were three old vaudeville hams--and I mean that in the nicest sense--support Garland beautifully, even if they do occasionally try taking the film away from her. Frank Morgan did the playing five distinct parts in the same movie thing twenty some years before Peter Sellers and he rivals Sellers in that department. And he totally sells it. Especially if you count his wizard as two separate performances--the big, scary disembodied head and the humbug with a heart of gold. And of course, we have Margaret Hamilton as Elmira Gulch/The Wicked Witch of the West. As scary as the Queen in Snow White might have been to kids, Hamilton is positively Evil Personified in both performances.
Some people in later years have taken the Witch's side and said that in the end Dorothy was the evil one, but I'm not certain they get the movie. One might make the argument that the Rudy Slippers are stolen from her, but Dorothy doesn't do that. Glinda the Allegedly Good Witch of the North (a delightful Billie Burke) does. Note I say Allegedly Good. Glinda says she's a Good witch, but I find her behavior pretty specious for a Good Witch. She steals the Slippers and puts them on Dorothy, thereby putting a bulls-eye on the poor kid's back. She sends Dorothy off to see the Wizard in the Emerald City without any mode of transportation even though it's a really long walk, knowing that the Wicked Witch wants to do terrible things to Dorothy. Of course, once safe in the Emerald City, the Wizard sends Dorothy off to kill the Witch, which makes me suspect him and Glinda were co-conspirators. And then, when all is said and done, Glinda shows back up and tells Dorothy "you could have gone home at any time you wanted, kiddo". No wonder the Scarecrow calls her out on that!
Actually, if you stop and think about it, the only thing that makes the Wicked Witch worse than Glinda is the fact that she's so hell-bent on killing Dorothy and her friends. On the other hand, Hamilton plays the part for all it's worth and then some. She looks like a nightmare, talks like a nightmare, and most of all acts like a nightmare. There are few, if any screen villains, that can come close to the delightful terror Hamilton inspires in the film. Ironically, she was one of the last of the original main cast to pass away.
The special effects, like in the 1933 King Kong, still hold up amazingly. I know, I know. Some too cool for his or her own good kid is gonna say that the special effects suck, especially compared to the CGI of today. But that kid is a tasteless moron and doesn't deserve to be listened to. The effects are amazing, even more so on the big screen. The tornado is particularly impressive. The rear screen shots, again like in King Kong, fool you since you don't even realize you're looking at rear screen and mattes. Matter of fact, not all the matte paintings look like paintings.
Hand in hand with this is the set design, which is absolutely stunning. Kansas looks appropriately gray and dusty and really kinda barren while Oz itself pops with color and design. It's a beautiful place, albeit one with a veneer of evil lurking just underneath. Much like the real world, if you think about it. But the film is optimistic since in the end beauty and goodness rise above evil, a timeless message and one which the world needs as much today as it did in 1939.
As for the music, is there a better score to a musical? Maybe Singin' In the Rain comes close, but let's be fair. That was a songbook musical which cherry picked the best tunes from earlier musicals. There's not a bad song in Oz, starting with Over The Rainbow, which may be one of the ten best songs ever written. The fact that MGM wanted to cut that song from the film for being too long shows that not even the studio knew quite what it was doing. Thank goodness they listened to Producer Mervynn Le Roy and left it in. It's an emotional and beautiful song and Garland sings it fantastically. Going back to Shirley Temple, I just can't hear her singing that song. The Munchkinland song is as memorable as it is long. And it is a long song.
One of the crimes against the film, however, is the cutting of Ray Bolger's dance sequence at the end of If I Only Had a Brain. MGM cut it for being too long. I've seen the footage--it's in one of the documentaries on Oz in one of the previous DVD releases--and the sequence is one of the most amazing dance sequences on film. Anyone who's seen Singin' In the Rain and marveled at Donald O'Connor's Make 'Em Laugh would be equally blown away by this sadly cut sequence. How long is too long anyhow? Goofy studio heads.
Of course, as beloved as Oz is, not everyone gets it or likes it. Beyond the tasteless person who doesn't watch anything older than The Dark Knight--a person not really worth mentioning in my opinion--there are the people who look at the fact that it's a fantasy film with witches and wizards and automatically lump it with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Now, I like the latter two series as much as anyone else, but the people who does this don't understand the point of the film, which is markedly different from the latter two. Oz is about discovering who you really are. This applies to all four main characters and even, to an extent to the Wizard himself. And not just the film's famous last line "there's no place like home". It's about discovering that the thing you really want, sometimes you had all along and just didn't know it. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion all had brains, a heart, and courage to begin with. They just didn't realize it. And Dorothy had a home and people who loved and cared about her. The Witch isn't so much a witch as she is an obstacle the characters need to overcome to realize the truth about themselves. Of course, there's also the fact that the whole thing is a dream (something the sequels tend to miss out on, too). A dream designed to help Dorothy realize the truth, but a dream nonetheless.
Wizard of Oz is not just a movie for kids either--nor was it ever just for kids. Like many great movies, it packs an emotional punch. I watched it the day after my brother died in 2010 and openly wept during Over the Rainbow. Once you get it, once you look past the candy coated sets and fantastic make up, you realize these characters and the world they inhabit are close to the real world. The film strikes several truths, some wryly--the Scarecrow's line about "some people without brains do an awful lot of talking"--some more gently.
It is ultimately an honest film, unashamed of it's own sentiment, much like kissing cousin It's A Wonderful Life. Oh, yes, I did go there. Let's be blunt about this. Both films are fantasies that deal with a desire to go somewhere else but characters who realize that home is where the heart is at the end. It's A Wonderful Life trades out Oz's sugar coated world for Bedford Falls, USA, it's Wizard and Dorothy's companions for a Guardian Angel, and the Wicked Witch for the Wicked Banker. But in some ways, the two films are not so far apart as you might imagine. Which may be why they both endure. Interestingly, both films were flops until rediscovered on TV years later.
At the end of the day, Oz is a film that speaks to audiences. It has for nearly 75 years now. I suspect it will continue to do so until this world of ours comes to an end. It is a magnificent movie, and a journey everyone should take from time to time, if only to remind ourselves of it's gentle message.
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