The Wizard of Oz Emerald City Opoly Review
Equally a child I simply did not notice whether a pic was in color or not. The movies themselves were such an overwhelming mystery that if they wanted to be in blackness and white, that was their business. It was not until I saw "The Wizard of Oz" for the first fourth dimension that I consciously noticed B&W versus color, as Dorothy was blown out of Kansas and into Oz. What did I call back? It made good sense to me.
The switch from black and white to color would accept had a special resonance in 1939, when the movie was made. Almost all films were yet existence made in black and white, and the cumbersome new color cameras came with a "Technicolor consultant" from the factory, who stood next to the cinematographer and officiously suggested higher light levels. Shooting in color might take been indicated because the pic was MGM's response to the huge success of Disney'southward pioneering color blithe characteristic, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937).
If "Wizard" began in one way and continued in another, that was likewise the history of the production. Richard Thorpe, the original director, was fired afterward 12 days. George Cukor filled in for three days, long enough to tell Judy Garland to lose the wig and the makeup, and and so Victor Fleming took over. When Fleming went to "Gone With the Wind," Male monarch Vidor did some of the Munchkin sequences, and the Kansas scenes.
There were cast changes, besides; after Buddy Ebsen, as the Tin can Human being, had an allergic reaction to the silver makeup, he was replaced by Jack Haley. Musical numbers were recorded and never used. Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West) was seriously burned when she went up in a puff of smoke. Even Toto was out of committee for two weeks after being stepped on past a crewmember.
Nosotros study all of these details, I remember, considering "The Wizard of Oz" fills such a big space in our imagination. It somehow seems existent and important in a style most movies don't. Is that because nosotros see it first when we're young? Or simply because it is a wonderful movie? Or because it sounds some buried universal annotation, some classic or deeply felt myth?
I lean toward the third possibility, that the elements in "The Wizard of Oz" powerfully fill a void that exists within many children. For kids of a certain age, home is everything, the center of the world. Only over the rainbow, dimly guessed at, is the wide world, fascinating and terrifying. There is a deep fundamental fear that events might conspire to ship the child from the rubber of home and strand him far abroad in a strange land. And what would he promise to find there? Why, new friends, to advise and protect him. And Toto, of course, because children accept such a strong symbiotic relationship with their pets that they presume they would go lost together.
This deep universal appeal explains why so many dissimilar people from many backgrounds accept a compartment of their retentiveness reserved for "The Wizard of Oz." Salman Rushdie, growing upwards in Bombay, remembers that seeing the pic at x "fabricated a writer of me." Terry McMillan, as an African-American kid in northern Michigan, "completely identified when no one had time to mind to Dorothy." Rushdie wrote that the picture show'south "driving force is the inadequacy of adults, fifty-fifty of adept adults, and how the weakness of grownups forces children to have control of their ain destinies." McMillan learned about courage, about "existence afraid but doing whatever it was you set out to do anyway."
They're touching on the central lesson of babyhood, which is that someday the kid will not be a kid, that home volition no longer exist, that adults will be no assistance because now the kid is an adult and must face the challenges of life alone. But that y'all tin can inquire friends to help you. And that even the Wizard of Oz is just human being, and has problems of his ain.
"The Magician of Oz" has a wonderful surface of comedy and music, special effects and excitement, but we still lookout it six decades later because its underlying story penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs them and then reassures them. As adults, we love it considering it reminds us of a journey we have taken. That is why whatsoever adult in control of a child is sooner or later on going to suggest a viewing of "The Wizard of Oz."
Judy Garland had, I gather, an unhappy childhood (in that location are those stories about MGM quacks shooting her full of speed in the morning time and tranquilizers at day'southward end), merely she was a luminous performer, already almost17 when she played young Dorothy. She was important to the picture considering she projected vulnerability and a sure sadness in every tone of her voice. A brassy young kid star (a young Ethel Merman, say) would have been fatal to the material because she would take approached it with as well much bravado. Garland's whole persona projected a tremulous uncertainty, a wistfulness. When she hoped that troubles would melt like lemon drops, y'all believed she had troubles.
Her friends on the Yellow Brick Road (the Tin can Man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion) were projections of every child's surreptitious fears. Are we real? Are we ugly and silly? Are we brave enough? In helping them, Dorothy was helping herself, but as an older child will overcome fears by acting brave earlier a younger ane.
The actors (Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr) had all come through a tradition of vaudeville and revue comedy, and played the characters with a sublime unself-consciousness. Maybe it helped that none of them knew they were making a great film. They seem relaxed and loose in many scenes, equally if the roles were a lark. Fifty. Frank Baum'due south book had been filmed before (Oliver Hardy played the Tin Man in 1925), and this version, while ambitious, was overshadowed by the studio'south simultaneous preparation of "Gone With the Wind." Garland was already a star when she made "Wizard," but not a not bad star--that came in the 1940s, inspired by "Sorcerer."
The special effects are glorious in that old Hollywood mode, in which you don't even have to look closely to meet where the set ends and the properties begins. Modern special furnishings show *exactly* how imaginary scenes might look; effects then showed how we *idea* well-nigh them. A bigger Yellow Brick Road would not take been a better i.
The picture show'southward storytelling device of a dream is just precisely obvious enough to appeal to younger viewers. Dorothy, faced with a crisis (the loss of Toto), meets the intriguing Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan) on the road. She is befriended by three subcontract easily (Bolger, Haley and Lahr). Before long comes the fearsome tornado. (What frightened me was that y'all could see individual things floating past--for months I dreamed circling around and around while seated at the little desk in my chamber, looking at classmates existence swept mutely past me.) And so, after the magical transition to color, Dorothy meets the same characters over again, so we know it's all a dream, but non actually.
There are good and bad developed figures in Oz--the Wicked Witches of the East and Due west, the Good Witch Glinda. Dorothy would similar assist from her friends but needs to assistance them instead ("If I Only Had a Brain," or a heart, or nerve, they sing). Arriving at final at the Emerald Metropolis, they have another dreamlike experience; almost everyone they run across seems vaguely like (because they're all played by Morgan). The Wizard sends them on a mission to get the Wicked Witch'southward broom, and information technology is not insignificant that the key to Dorothy's return to Kansas is the pair of ruby slippers. Grownup shoes.
The ending has e'er seemed poignant to me. Dorothy is back in Kansas, but the color has drained from the picture, and her magical friends are mundane in one case over again. "The land of Oz wasn't such a bad identify to be stuck in," decided young Terry McMillan, discontented with her life in Michigan. "It beat the farm in Kansas."
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the moving-picture show critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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The Wizard of Oz (1939)
101 minutes
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