Hey everyone, happy Friday! How's it going? I'm doing well. Today I'm doing a very special movie review. Tomorrow would've been my late grandfather's birthday and The Wizard of Oz was one of his favourite movies. So in honour of his birthday, I'm going to review The Wizard of Oz. Also, even though I didn't put a spoiler label in the title of this post, there will be spoilers in this review. It's an almost 82 year old movie so it's not my fault if you've never seen it before. So let's get right into it shall we?
The Wizard of Oz is one of those movies that scared me when I first saw it on VHS when I was really young. I don't actually remember how old I was at the time, but young enough that the Wicked Witch legitimately scared me. But then I saw the movie on TV or I borrowed the VHS tape from my grandparents when I was a teenager and I fell in love with it. I always find it fascinating to see movies that were made in the 1930s and 1940s, because Hollywood was so different back then and everything you do on the internet or on TV today were all done in cinemas back then. If you wanted to watch the news, you went to the movie theatre. If you liked cartoons, you saw them in the theatre. If you were into live action serialized storytelling, you went to the theatre and watched movie serials. Not only was there no TV back in those days, but there was no such thing as home video. You went to the theatre to see a movie and that was it, unless you were lucky enough to go to the theatre more than once for the same movie, or you were lucky enough to catch a movie during it's theatrical re-release however many years later.
According to former Disney animator/animation director John Musker in the making of documentary for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the success of Walt Disney's classic animated film a year earlier is what led MGM to greenlight this movie. I don't know if that's actually true or not, but the page for the movie on the Oz Wiki says that the filmmakers were influenced by the success of the Disney movie to make the movie, but there doesn't seem to be any piece of information, not even the making of documentary on the Blu-ray, that says whether Snow White's success is what led MGM to actually greenlight the project. Especially since according to the Oz Wiki, filming was supposed to begin in Spring 1938, which was just a few months after Snow White's theatrical debut, following it's 1937 premiere. Back then filmmakers tended not to develop a movie until it's been pitched to a studio and given the go ahead by studio executives.
I love this movie. It's fun and charming. It's also exciting. Even though I've seen this movie numerous times over the years I still don't know it well enough to remember what happens when through the movie. It's not like with Star Wars where I remember everything about the movie, including when important pieces of dialogue are spoken. Obviously the beginning through until Dorothy leaves Munchkinland is always as I remember it, but after that I don't remember when certain events happen. For example, I always forget whether Dorothy gets taken hostage by the Wicked Witch before the quartet gets to the Emerald City and meets the Wizard or if it happens after they get to the Emerald City. It happens after, because they go to kill the Witch and she attacks them with her army of flying monkeys, who capture Dorothy.
My favourite characters are Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West. Both Judy Garland and Margaret Hamilton did an amazing job of playing these two characters and their antagonistic chemistry is awesome and flows perfectly from Dorothy and Miss Gulch in the Kansas part of the movie at the beginning, to Dorothy and the Witch in the Oz segments of the film, which take up the rest of the movie. There's just an innocence to the character of Dorothy that I think Judy Garland portrays so well. Sadly I haven't actually seen any other movie in Judy Garland's filmography so I don't know how she does in those films, I just know that I like her in this movie.
Speaking of Miss Gulch, I thought it was interesting that she had as much power as she does given the period this movie was made in and what period it's set in (presumably the 1930s though it could be earlier). I mean she was able to get the sheriff to sign an order for Miss Gulch to take Dorothy's dog, Toto, and destroy him. I mean that's not really a good indication of anything, but Aunt Em's line at the end of that scene where she says that Miss Gulch owns half the county kinda stuck out to me during this viewing.
I feel like the Wicked Witch of the West was the first real cinematic villain in live action films. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had the Wicked Queen, and the Flash Gordon movie serials had Ming the Merciless, but up to this point I don't think there'd been a full length live action movie that had the kind of villain that the Wicked Witch is, and is almost the prototype for characters like Darth Vader, Rita Repulsa, Queen Beryl, and many other main villain characters in movies, TV shows, and comic books.
Of course, The Wizard of Oz is one of many adaptations of the 1900 children's novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Hard to believe that the book was originally published 121 years ago. I've never read the book, so I don't know how the movie differs from the book given it's an adaptation not a direct translation. It's in the public domain though, and a version of the text is available in full on the Oz Wiki, so I can read it any time I want if I so choose. And I might decide to do that once I've read the Percy Jackson books, which my sister is lending me.
As I mentioned earlier, I originally saw The Wizard of Oz on VHS at my grandparents's house. I don't remember how old I was of course, but I couldn't've been less than 4 or 5 years old as I remember watching it for the first time. The VHS was the 1989 50th Anniversary home video release and I'd like to say that my grandparents bought it sometime between when it came out and when it went out of print prior to the film's next VHS release which came out in 1991. I have this release in my VHS collection now as it's one of the tapes I grabbed from Nana's house a few weeks before the pandemic hit last year. Which is how I watched it last night for this review. I feel like I saw the movie quite alot on this tape when I was a kid. Mainly because it was one of my grandfather's favourite movies and he'd occasionally have it on on the TV when we went over. I know I borrowed it at least once sometime in the mid-2000s when I was a teenager and had a VCR in my bedroom.
I also have the 2013 Blu-ray release, which came out for the film's 75th Anniversary. My brother got it for me for my birthday. It's got a two hour Making Of documentary, which I watched as soon as I got the Blu-ray. It's a pretty decent documentary.
One other thing that I wanted to touch on here, is the fact that MGM technically doesn't exist anymore. It still produces movies, but it doesn't distribute them to theatres anymore, aside from the James Bond films. The films they do produce are primarily distributed through other studios like Paramount, Warner Bros., or Sony, with their older catalogue from before 1985 being distributed by Warner Bros. which holds the distribution license via Turner Entertainment. Which is crazy to think about because MGM was one of the first movie studios alongside Paramount (originally Famous Players), Warner Bros, Universal, and United Artists
Overall The Wizard of Oz is a great movie. If you haven't seen it, I implore you to watch it on Netflix or pick it up on Blu-ray, or whatever your preferred physical media format is, and watch it. It's awesome and you will have a fun time watching it. Does it have it's flaws? Yes, but every movie does. This movie's biggest flaw for me is that the Wicked Witch shows up several times throughout the picture and keeps deciding to hold off on killing Dorothy until SHE'S LITERALLY ON THE WITCH'S FRONT LAWN!!!! If that's not the prototype for every children's movie and TV show villain to come, I don't know what is. Lol. Otherwise, the pacing is good, the characters are fun, and even the songs are great.
Alright guys that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back on Sunday for my review of the new Pixar film, Luca which dropped on Disney+ today. I also have this week's episode of Loki to watch since I haven't done that yet. As I said in my review, I enjoyed the first episode, but the thing is I don't feel the need to rush onto Disney+ first thing after breakfast on the day an episode drops. So we'll see what I feel like doing tonight once I've had dinner. In the meantime I hope you have a wonderful evening and an awesome weekend and I will talk to you soon. Take care.
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