The Wizard of Oz movie review (1939) | Roger Ebert (2024)

As a child I simply did not notice whether a movie was in color ornot. The movies themselves were such an overwhelming mystery that if theywanted to be in black and white, that was their business. It was not until Isaw "The Wizard of Oz" for the first time that I consciously noticed B&Wversus color, as Dorothy was blown out of Kansas and into Oz. What did I think?It made good sense to me.

The switch from black and white to color would have had aspecial resonance in 1939, when the movie was made. Almost all films were stillbeing made in black and white, and the cumbersome new color cameras came with a“Technicolor consultant” from the factory, who stood next to thecinematographer and officiously suggested higher light levels. Shooting incolor might have been indicated because the film was MGM's response to the hugesuccess of Disney's pioneering color animated feature, "Snow White and theSeven Dwarfs" (1937).

If“Wizard” began in one way and continued in another, that was also the historyof the production. Richard Thorpe, the original director, was fired after 12days. George Cukor filled in for three days, long enough to tell Judy Garlandto lose the wig and the makeup, and then Victor Fleming took over. When Flemingwent to “Gone With the Wind,” King Vidor did some of the Munchkin sequences,and the Kansas scenes.

Therewere cast changes, too; after Buddy Ebsen, as the Tin Man, had an allergicreaction to the silvery makeup, he was replaced by Jack Haley. Musical numberswere 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 ofcommission for two weeks after being stepped on by a crewmember.

Westudy all of these details, I think, because “The Wizard of Oz” fills such alarge space in our imagination. It somehow seems real and important in a waymost movies don't. Is that because we see it first when we’re young? Or simplybecause it is a wonderful movie? Or because it sounds some buried universalnote, some archetype or deeply felt myth?

Ilean toward the third possibility, that the elements in “The Wizard of Oz”powerfully fill a void that exists inside many children. For kids of a certainage, home is everything, the center of the world. But over the rainbow, dimlyguessed at, is the wide earth, fascinating and terrifying. There is a deepfundamental fear that events might conspire to transport the child from thesafety of home and strand him far away in a strange land. And what would hehope to find there? Why, new friends, to advise and protect him. And Toto, ofcourse, because children have such a strong symbiotic relationship with theirpets that they assume they would get lost together.

Thisdeep universal appeal explains why so many different people from manybackgrounds have a compartment of their memory reserved for “The Wizard of Oz.”Salman Rushdie, growing up in Bombay, remembers that seeing the film at 10“made a writer of me.” Terry McMillan, as an African-American child in northernMichigan, “completely identified when no one had time to listen to Dorothy.”Rushdie wrote that the film's “driving force is the inadequacy of adults, evenof good adults, and how the weakness of grownups forces children to takecontrol of their own destinies.” McMillan learned about courage, about “beingafraid but doing whatever it was you set out to do anyway.”

They'retouching on the key lesson of childhood, which is that someday the child willnot be a child, that home will no longer exist, that adults will be no helpbecause now the child is an adult and must face the challenges of life alone.But that you can ask friends to help you. And that even the Wizard of Oz isonly human, and has problems of his own.

“TheWizard of Oz” has a wonderful surface of comedy and music, special effects andexcitement, but we still watch it six decades later because its underlyingstory penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs themand then reassures them. As adults, we love it because it reminds us of ajourney we have taken. That is why any adult in control of a child is sooner orlater going to suggest a viewing of “The Wizard of Oz.”

JudyGarland had, I gather, an unhappy childhood (there are those stories about MGMquacks shooting her full of speed in the morning and tranquilizers at day'send), but she was a luminous performer, already almost17 when she played youngDorothy. She was important to the movie because she projected vulnerability anda certain sadness in every tone of her voice. A brassy young child star (ayoung Ethel Merman, say) would have been fatal to the material because shewould have approached it with too much bravado. Garland’s whole personaprojected a tremulous uncertainty, a wistfulness. When she hoped that troubleswould melt like lemon drops, you believed she had troubles.

Herfriends on the Yellow Brick Road (the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the CowardlyLion) were projections of every child's secret fears. Are we real? Are we uglyand silly? Are we brave enough? In helping them, Dorothy was helping herself,just as an older child will overcome fears by acting brave before a youngerone.

Theactors (Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr) had all come up through a traditionof vaudeville and revue comedy, and played the characters with a sublimeunself-consciousness. Maybe it helped that none of them knew they were making agreat movie. They seem relaxed and loose in many scenes, as if the roles were alark. L. Frank Baum's book had been filmed before (Oliver Hardy played the TinMan in 1925), and this version, while ambitious, was overshadowed by thestudio's simultaneous preparation of “Gone With the Wind.” Garland was alreadya star when she made “Wizard,” but not a great star--that came in the 1940s,inspired by “Wizard.”

Thespecial effects are glorious in that old Hollywood way, in which you don't evenhave to look closely to see where the set ends and the backdrop begins. Modernspecial effects show *exactly* how imaginary scenes might look; effects thenshowed how we *thought* about them. A bigger Yellow Brick Road would not havebeen a better one.

Themovie's storytelling device of a dream is just precisely obvious enough toappeal to younger viewers. Dorothy, faced with a crisis (the loss of Toto),meets the intriguing Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan) on the road. She isbefriended by three farm hands (Bolger, Haley and Lahr). Soon comes thefearsome tornado. (What frightened me was that you could see individual thingsfloating by--for months I dreamed circling around and around while seated atthe little desk in my bedroom, looking at classmates being swept mutely past me.)Then, after the magical transition to color, Dorothy meets the same charactersagain, so we know it's all a dream, but not really.

Thereare good and bad adult figures in Oz--the Wicked Witches of the East and West,the Good Witch Glinda. Dorothy would like help from her friends but needs tohelp them instead (“If I Only Had a Brain,” or a heart, or nerve, they sing).Arriving at last at the Emerald City, they have another dreamlike experience;almost everyone they meet seems vaguely similar (because they’re all played byMorgan). The Wizard sends them on a mission to get the Wicked Witch's broom,and it is not insignificant that the key to Dorothy’s return to Kansas is thepair of ruby slippers. Grownup shoes.

Theending has always seemed poignant to me. Dorothy is back in Kansas, but thecolor has drained from the film, and her magical friends are mundane onceagain. “The land of Oz wasn't such a bad place to be stuck in,” decided youngTerry McMillan, discontented with her life in Michigan. “It beat the farm inKansas.”