There's no place like home...
Eighty years ago, America was still just barely out of the throes of the Great Depression. With the horrors of WW2 just on the horizon, people scraping by needed fantasy, color, some extravagant escapism. And that year, MGM made a landmark film that delivered just that. It's one that's withstood the decades, delivered on to generation after generation, with lines of dialogue burned straight into everyday vernacular. And as it tends to get shown around the Christmas season a lot, let this be the start of our holiday retrospectives this year. Click your heels three times--it's The Wizard of Oz.
It wasn't the first adaptation of L. Frank Baum's classic 1900 children's novel, but most of the ones before have been lost to time anyway. Believe it or not, despite some of it being your old-timey fairy tale as you might expect, there's a lot of darker, more badass aspects to the book that often get overlooked. Did you know that the Cowardly Lion punched out a giant spider terrorizing his woods? Or that the Tin Man was forced by magic to dismember himself piece by piece? Or that the cast encounters tiger monsters with wolverine-like claws? There's a lot here the likes of Del Toro would love.
Anyway--perhaps for practicality, the 1939 film went for a more straightforward musical approach, the better to appeal to the struggling audiences at the time. Production was rife with problems--rewrites and recastings, with some proving allergic to the elaborate makeup required. Long shoots and early mornings were the norm, given all the preparation needed for the grand sets and costumes the film took on. Combining vast sets, rear projection, and all sorts of creatures and models, it's little wonder it proved a nightmare to shoot. Hell, it's even less wonder you got urban legends that say you can see a Munchkin hang himself in the far background of one shot.
Most of the stars were from the theater halls of vaudeville, which was still a big deal at the time--including Judy Garland as Dorothy, Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow, Jack Haley as Tin Man, and Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion. For the dancing and singing involved, it was a natural fit--though I can't imagine the costuming made things any easier for them.
Still, the end result, while not the big hit at the time you might imagine, made an impact. All things considered, it still looks gorgeous, with the technicolor sets glimmering with contrasts that only that technique could provide. The Emerald City is rightfully an iconic location from film, and the combination of colors and film stock give a sort of hyperreal feel to things that means it's aged surprisingly well.
But there's one reason for current audiences to see it--one reason that freaked my kid self out when I saw it, one image that's still resonating today: Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West. You can tell she's goddamn relishing the part--that makeup and the voice, combined with the slightly demented theme song, gave us a villain they still make stage shows about to this day. And I gotta admit? Some scenes, like the Flying Monkeys descending from the sky, still give me chills.
 |
| You've made your own political joke already, haven't you. |
Overall, it's not hard to see why The Wizard of Oz kept going through the twentieth century--it combines that right amount of schmaltzy innocence with catchy tunes about dead witches that still get airplay, with mildly deranged menace and scares. From a technical filmmaking standpoint, the techniques and artistry that went into it still impress. If you want to go back to being a kid for a moment, and go back over that rainbow, it can still be worth a watch. Hell, you can excuse the slightly selective behaviour of the Good Witch with the fact that it's all a dream in Dorothy's clobbered head!
Now, there's something else I want to talk about--namely the pseudo-sequel in 1985, Return to Oz. Though the original book and its followups fell into the public domain decades before, elements specific to the MGM film remained locked down--so while Disney couldn't really declare it as an actual sequel, they basically did so anyway in the marketing, down to paying a hefty fee for the ruby slippers. This was the age of dark fantasy family films like The Dark Crystal, and this one forewent dancing munchkins in favor of that sort of tone.
And, having watched this one as a kid as well? It was just a teensy bit demented and terrifying as a result. No, really, the beginning is all about Dorothy (this time played by Fairzura Balk) being sent in for electric shock therapy to cure her of the 'delusions' she suffered--and it only goes worse from there. The effects are delightfully horrible, like these Wheeler hybrids of man and machine that terrorize Dorothy when she inevitably, well, returns to Oz--even the Scarecrow has this weird fixed expression like a deranged mascot when you do see him.
And then there's the villain that is the Gnome King, rendered in stop motion--which just adds to his unsettling factor. Watching him threatening to eat Dorothy and her friends, before crumbling? Oh yeah, that'll leave your kid self sleepless at night. Oh, but that's not the worst of it--did I talk about the hallway of laughing decapitated heads as well?
So yeah. Return to Oz definitely isn't something I'd put on for the kids unless they're into that sort of thing, but if you want some mad and macabre eighties fantasy, it might just be up your alley. It flopped at the time precisely for being so scary, but if you're too old and cynical to enjoy the wide-eyed old-time innocence of the '39 film...try this one instead.
Ultimately though, the MGM film is the one to watch or have on the background when families get together around the festive season. Little kids will love the colors, and grown-ups can still enjoy the Wicked Witch tear up the scenery. There's been plenty of other adaptations of the book over the decades, but for good reason, this is the one that's lasted near a century...
Comments
Post a Comment