1939 – The Wizard of Oz

It’s an american fantasy musical produced by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. The movie is based on 1900 kids book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by Frank Baum with illustrations by W.W. Denslow. It was “mainly” produced by Victor Fleming and stars Judy Garland in her breakout and most famous role as Dorothy. I rented it on Apple for 3,99 Eur.

Some movies are so influential that you tend to know them by osmosis. I have watched exactly one half Avengers movie (the 2012 one, did not finish, don’t like Marvel movies), yet I know of Thanos and the snap. I have not and don’t plan to watch any of the Avatar movies, yet I know it’s blue Pocahontas. And so we come to 1939, where I am embarrassed to say that I haven’t seen the two most famous movies of that year: Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Or at least not consciously – I have seen hundreds of clips of both movies, know of the controversies, the significance of both. I have read the Margaret Mitchell’s really well written book of the former (and the unrealistic, kitchy, but very entertaining sequel Scarlett) when I was like 13-14, it opened this whole new world for me – surviving as a woman in the 19th century. So with the Wicked and Wicked: For Good movies being in the conversation, I thought I should go with the latter of the two movies.

Boy, I wasn’t wrong about the osmosis. And it’s not the “Yellow Brick Road” or “Somewhere over the Rainbow”, those I could understand. It’s knowing the lyrics to “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead”, even though I didn’t know the context of the song. It’s knowing “I’m melting, oh what a world” from Who Framed Roger Rabbit and realizing I never questioned its origin. It’s my friend from high school often saying: “Are you a good bitch or a bad bitch?” and now getting she was quoting Glinda (with “w” and “b” changed). And I do think, I have seen this movie running in the background when I was a kid at my best friend’s place, but I think I never made it to the Emerald City, I stopped at the lion joining the gang. Or maybe I am confusing it with Alice in Wonderland, which I also saw at her place (guys, I was like 6 or 7)?

So, how can I rate this? I mean, if I see it with kids eyes, just like 2 weeks ago Robin Hood, then the transition from the black and white Kansas to the bright Technicolor Fantasyland of Oz, must have been absolutely breathtaking (I found it almost blindingly so). The musical was not as entrenched as it would become one or two decades later and having musical numbers for kids must have been quite something. I saw that movie somewhat tired before falling into bed and I had quite psychedelic dreams that night trying to escape Oz, so the movie stays with you, heh!

The story is easy to understand and the movie has an easy to grasp message: “There is no place like home!”, a comfort after the devastating years of the Great Depression and the World War looming over the horizon. Even though the poverty is clear in Aunt Em’s farm in Kansas, it’s family that we long to get back to.

But that message? I don’t like it very much – it’s not quite the meanness that comes out in this article from The Guardian, in that Americans fall for a charlatan like Oz. It’s more that every journey away from home changes you and Dorothy has not resolved one single of her problems at home. For example, Toto will still be impounded (unless perhaps Miss Gulch really was killed in the tornado?). In 2001, Hayao Miyazaki released Spirited Away in which Chihiro undergoes her own journey in a fantasy world. Even though in principle she returns to her normal life with her parents, she is a changed girl, has matured immensely and us with her, through her work in the washhouse and especially that train ride. And it’s exactly those moments of calm that stand in contrast to the frenzy of hopping from one thing to the next in the Wizard of Oz. It’s relentless and never stops and in the end it turned out to be a hoax, all she had to do was to tap her heels.

But I have spent already so much thinking about this movie, its message and its impact, that I do understand it to be one of the “great movies”. One can understand the cultural value of something, even though it’s not your value. Sometimes, it’s better the movie evokes a reaction of anger out of you instead of indifference. I am glad I saw this.

P.S.: I know, I just glossed over the troubled production this movie had, the everlasting bad effects it had on its cast, chief among them Judy Garland being propped up by a cocktail of drugs (amphetamines, barbiturates and other diet pills) which eventually resulted in her death. I can only recommend Be Kind Rewind’s video on the making of the movie.