Wizard of Oz film review, Assignments of Theatre

Download Wizard of Oz film review and more Assignments Theatre in PDF only on Docsity! The terror instilled in me as a child by repeated viewings of “The Wizard of Oz,” I now realize, drove me to be- come a film critic. Every holiday season the film would be broadcast on television, and with the rest of the family I would be obliged to watch. Was I the only one who had night- mares about twisters languidly, inexorably lolling across the Kansas grayness, the phallic funnels looming over the womblike shelter of the storm cellar, shut tight to Dorothy’s beseeching? The macabre spectacle of the wicked Witch of the East’s feet, robbed of their Ruby Slippers, shriveling up under Dorothy’s house? Or the Winged Monkeys, their formations filling the sky like a cross between Goya’s “Sleep of Reason” and the Luft- waffe, off to their hideous dismemberment of the Scare- crow? Or the appalling realization that one’s entire expe- rience, in living color yet (though in its earliest TV broad- casts, in even eerier black and white), might be no more than a dream? These were things, like sex and death (“Goldfinger” and “Bambi” did the job for those two), that no one spoke about. Year after year I watched, the terrors unspoken, until the ritual of the film reviewing would sublimate them. Years later, my fate as a critic sealed, I returned to “Oz” to see what all the fuss was about. Released in a newly restored version, the film was being shown in a large theater filled with an audience consisting mostly of hun- dreds of prepubescent girls dressed in Dorothy’s blue gingham dress. It was the first time I saw it , as they say, the way it was meant to be seen, on a big screen and in a big dark hall with hundreds of strangers. Would “Oz,” like the genial shaman of the title, prove a humbug? Would it disperse into smoke and mirrors and, with it, the whole artifice of movies which I revered? The artifice proved shaky all right, but it wasn’t “Oz”’s fault. Because of some projector problem we had to be content with a postage-stamp image on the big screen that was about the same size as that on a large TV in a sports bar. So much for six decades of technological de- velopment. And the preteen audience seemed more respectful than awed. No crying, squealing, or laughter, a few clap-alongs with the tunes (“Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” a particular crowd pleaser), and only polite ap- plause when the Wicked Witch was melted. Gradually, though, the magic, long gone be- yond kitsch to arche- type by ceaseless rep- etition and cultural recycling, drew me in, but the innocence of my childhood respons- es had darkened the rueful experience. The cyclone no longer got a rise out of me, but the grey wastes of Kansas, as bleak as the Oklahoma Dustbowl in John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” re- leased in 1940, the following year, seemed horrifying enough. Against that backdrop, surrounded by the dilapidated barnyard, Dorothy’s rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” echoes over the years as a stinging reproach to false optimism and lost illusions. The miracle of Judy Garland’s performance lies in her utter lack, not only of makeup and superficial beauty, but of irony. And, of course, the homespun, limpid beauty would slowly be laid to waste in the tragedy that was Garland’s life. But her Dorothy lives on, an icon free to be picked apart by fans and critics, such as myself, desperate to retrieve her wonder. When amazement fails, there’s always analysis, and few films are as rife with archetypal reso- nance and historical, cultural and personal reverbera- tions as “Oz.” Some essay questions for discussion: How does Dorothy’s quest with her three needy, dysfunction- al friends relate to current pop-psychological issues of empowerment and passive aggression? Is the film a Freudian, feminist, or Marxist allegory? Is the man be- hind the curtain a metaphor for the dubious magic of the motion picture industry itself? Well, so be it. The key to growing up, as Dorothy real- The Wizard of Oz By Peter Keough The A List: The National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films, 2002 Poster from 1949 re-issue of the film. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog