The Wiz­ard of Oz (1939)

Nary a week goes by with­out the rere­lease of an old ​‘clas­sic’ and so a dif­fer­ent word is need­ed to describe the extreme lega­cy of Vic­tor Fleming’s The Wiz­ard of Oz, which hits screens again in cel­e­bra­tion of its 75^th birth­day. Every­thing about the MGM Tech­ni­col­or musi­cal from quotable lines (“I have a feel­ing we’re not in Kansas any­more”) to pig­tailed child-super­star, Judy Gar­land, to cos­tumes (ging­ham pinafore and ruby slip­pers), to the inno­v­a­tive-for-1939 spe­cial effects to the slew of canon­i­cal tunes are so icon­ic that to watch them unfold as intend­ed in a chrono­log­i­cal film rather than as a wink­ing cita­tion is sur­re­al, like dis­cov­er­ing the first ring on an ancient oak that has since grown as wide as a tank.

Set aside over­fa­mil­iar­i­ty and what is sur­pris­ing is how well the wit of Noël Lan­g­ley, Flo­rence Ryer­son and Edgar Allen Woolf’s script has weath­ered. ​“Dorothy bit you?” dead­pans Uncle Hen­ry when screech­ing neigh­bour, Miss Gulch, says she’s con­fis­cat­ing Dorothy’s dog, Toto. ​“No, the dog!” ​“She bit the dog?!” Fleming’s direc­tion is fast-paced and despite the kitsch imagery and all-round whole­some­ness of his hero­ine, there is a brisk­ness of wit and spir­it that is almost, but not quite, sub­ver­sive. Fur­ther­more, brave puns are scat­ted like the straw from a mon­key-rav­aged scarecrow.

The cen­tral themes of illu­sions, dreams and going on an extra­or­di­nary adven­ture all the bet­ter to come home and appre­ci­ate what you have there are endur­ing. L Frank Baum, who wrote the source nov­el, believed that sex was not for chil­dren and if there is any romance it is pure­ly that of the movies and of the imag­i­na­tion, which are in some ways, the same thing. The moment when Dorothy opens the door of her sepia coloured Kansas cot­tage to the bright Tech­ni­col­or land of Oz is one of unpar­al­leled won­der and innovation.

If there is any cri­tique to lev­el at this fan­ta­sy it is at the sort of cin­e­mat­ic notions that inform this line from Glin­da, The Witch of the North. ​“Only bad witch­es are ugly,” she says indul­gent­ly after Dorothy express­es sur­prise at her looks. Sev­en­ty-five years on and Hol­ly­wood still clings to the child­ish con­fla­tion of beau­ty and virtue. This illu­sion is the most dam­ag­ing one ped­dled by both Oz and – more wor­ry­ing­ly – the dream-weav­ing men that pow­er our spectacles.