This is the next entry in my ongoing 100 Essential Films series. If you missed the first one, you can find the explanation for what I’m doing here. Film number seven needs no introduction, really. It’s a movie that most of us know by heart and have seen dozens of times. It’s The Wizard of Oz. I’ve probably seen it a dozen or more times, but this viewing was certainly the closest attention I’ve ever paid in terms of theme and production detail. I tried my hardest not to simply be swept away to the magical land of Oz; that’s no easy feat, which you know if you love the movie as much as I do. Like every other film in the series so far, I borrowed a Blu-ray through intra-library loan. It was the 2013 release in commemoration of the film’s 75th anniversary. The transfer is gorgeous.
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The Wizard of Oz (1939)
dir. Victor Fleming
Rated: N/A
image: Pop Chart Lab
Writer Anna Garvey went viral back in 2015 with a great essay called The Oregon Trail Generation: Life Before and After Mainstream Tech. The title pretty much says it all, but the piece was about a certain subset of people – of which I am one – who essentially grew up as our modern digital technology did the same. She used the computer game The Oregon Trail, a game I played many times as a tiny fifth grader, as the iconic bit of pop culture that defined those of us who aren’t quite Gen-Xers but aren’t quite Millennials either.
I think the movie equivalent of that game just might be The Wizard of Oz, for a very specific reason. I and my Oregon Trail Generation cohorts are the last group of people who will remember how special it was when broadcast network television aired The Wizard of Oz once each year. This was a major event; it was one my family never missed. It was even more special because, in those days, that was the only way to see it. The classic 1939 film was released for the first time on home video in 1980, but VCRs were prohibitively expensive back then – my family watched our first home video release, Ghostbusters, in 1985 or ’86, and only because we rented the VCR at the same store in which we rented the movie.
The story of the adventures of Dorothy Gale and her magical pals continued to air yearly on one network or another through 2005, but by then everyone had access not just to VCRs, but DVD players as well. Even for those of us whose parents couldn’t afford to be early adopters of home video technology, the unique cultural-event feel of those once-a-year broadcasts started to fade by 1990 or so.
I use that very long preamble as a way to explain why, to this day, I still get chills throughout The Wizard of Oz each and every time I watch it. But those chills aren’t just due to a deep feeling of nostalgia on my part, at least if the lasting cultural impact and sustained popularity of The Wizard of Oz is any indication. No, the movie – based on a series of 14 children’s books written between 1900 and 1920 by author L. Frank Baum – is a delightful, fantastical tale of discovery about finding your true self and your way back home.
I can’t help but feel deeply moved each time I hear Judy Garland croon Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Her performance of the song about the longing for a perfect life, untouched by heartache, is tinged with both sorrow and optimism. That melancholic sensibility is even more powerful after having seen Renée Zellweger’s knock-out portrayal of Garland in the biopic Judy. Garland had a rough upbringing in show biz. One of director Victor Fleming’s colleagues related a tale of Fleming taking his 16-year-old star aside during the shooting of Oz. He slapped her in the face when she was having difficulty making it through a scene without lapsing into giggles. It gives me pause every time I hear one of these horror stories lying just beneath the surface of the art form I love so much.
The Wizard of Oz also remains relevant for the way the revolutionary, at the time, make-up and special effects still hold up after 80+ years. I’m still wowed by all of the creatures Dorothy meets on her journey along the Yellow Brick Road, but the one that I’m most in awe of is The Scarecrow. It’s probably the deceptive simplicity of the make-up applied to actor Ray Bolger that makes it so effective. The subtle blending of make-up into the rest of the mask Bolger wears, so that it looks like his whole head is made of a burlap sack, still fools me into thinking the person I’m watching is a man made of straw and cloth.
A side-note: My partner, Rachel, is perpetually wearing sunglasses whenever she’s outside, and when it’s for prolonged periods, her nose gets a tan that is quite a bit darker than the area covered by the sunglasses. So, every summer, from May through about September, she gets the most adorable tan that makes her nose look just like The Scarecrow’s.
The Wizard of Oz also lends itself to endless interpretations and theses on the picture’s underlying meaning. Deep analysis has been done about how the story is an allegory for American monetary policy, for instance. The thing that struck me on this 100 Essential Films viewing – and I assure you, I’m aware that this is in no way an original idea – is that Victor Fleming’s film can be read as the process of rejecting a belief in God and becoming an atheist. The unmasking of The Wizard – by Dorothy’s little dog, Toto, no less – as nothing more than a “humbug,” just a man putting on a magic show, has implications of exposing the belief in a magic invisible sky wizard as the same thing.
Even the film’s representation of Satan, the Wicked Witch of the West, is also exposed as a hollow threat when she melts away to nothing after having water thrown in her face. When Dorothy wakes from her “dream” – I actually like the interpretation that everything that happened to Dorothy wasn’t her imagination, and did, in fact, happen – it’s like waking from the cultural hypnosis of organized religion. Her demeanor in the last seconds of the film makes us believe that she is a changed person, ready to put the idea of a supernatural creator behind her forever.
There’s also the revelation for The Scarecrow, The Tin Man, and The Cowardly Lion that they don’t need to be granted their deepest desires from an all-powerful Wizard. They’ve had the qualities they desire within them all along. Those qualities – a brain, a heart, and courage – are uniquely human and empathetic. We can all learn to use them to make our world a better place, no gods necessary.
Whether you’re looking for deeper meaning, or simply enjoying it as a lighthearted children’s fairy tale, The Wizard of Oz has proved itself a timeless work of art that can transport its audience to a completely different world.
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image: Pop Chart Lab
image: Pop Chart Lab