The Wizard of Oz: Birth of Imagination

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue; and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”

I don’t think I’ve sat down and watched The Wizard of Oz in more than fifteen years. Among the first things I noticed doing so now in 2019, nearly eighty years to the day of its original release on August 25th, 1939, was the amount of obvious foreshadowing in the first twenty minutes. The farmhands are each equated with their later analogues through blatant metaphors and personality quirks (Huck’s “head made out of straw” comment), Professor Marvel is clearly a fraud in spite of his good nature, Dorothy at one point straight up calls Miss Gulch a “wicked old witch”. We don’t notice these things watching the film as children, or maybe we do and reason that it doesn’t matter. It still doesn’t matter. Despite being the part of the movie we’re not supposed to care about, the portrait of a dreary Kansas bedighted by one instant icon of a song, those opening scenes are extraordinarily paced and economically written while harshly drawing a contrast between reality and the world of wonder we’re about to enter.

The bleak, bland sepia tone environment of this part of the movie was not an unfamiliar aesthetic at the time it was released -hell it’s barely distinguishable from The Grapes of Wrath which came out a year later; really disappointing for a movie based on such a lively and popular novel as L. Frank Baum’s 1900 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the progenitor of a series of thirteen successive novels by Baum and a further nineteen by Ruth Plumly Thompson. 

But then something happens: the tornado hits, the house goes flying, and when it lands Dorothy opens the door onto a gorgeous technicolour fairy tale full of the boldest and brightest hues of the spectrum. I remember believing when I was young that this was the moment colour film was introduced to the world and it really should have been. Has there ever been a richer and more beautiful smattering of colour and texture on film? MGM knew they were on the verge of a monumental turning point for the medium and took every advantage of it, honing on the explicitly radiant elements of the story: the Yellow Brick Road, the Emerald City; while also adding their own: the ruby slippers, the Wicked Witch’s green skin. And the result is still one of the most vibrantly colourful and prettiest movies ever made.

It wasn’t just the colours that made a difference though. The Wizard of Oz is an icon of cinema for a plethora of other reasons, ranging from its instantly memorable cast of characters and the iconic songs of Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, to the outstanding art direction by Cedric Gibbons, groundbreaking special effects by Arnold Gillespie and genius costuming by Adrian (make-up by Jack Dawn). But its colour is central to what it meant for cinema as a beacon of fantasy storytelling, formalist excellence, and unbridled creativity. This wasn’t just a movie in colour, it fully transported you to a world of colour, which must have felt particularly magical at the tail end of the Great Depression. The Wizard of Oz was one of the first films of the sound era to be a fantasy, a boisterous and vibrant encapsulation of the notion of cinema as escapism. Following in the footsteps of Walt Disney, it spoke to children and was unafraid to be childish in sensibility and narrative approach. And in this focus, technique, and presentation it laid the groundwork more than any other film of its era for the development of modern mainstream cinema. All the superhero and franchise film series based in outlandish worlds, characters, and concepts that dominate Hollywood’s output today. It all began here.

That sounds an awful lot like a condemnation of The Wizard of Oz, that it’s responsible for the current deluge of often tiresome and homogeneous big budget movies shoved into theatres at the expense of humbler, better films. But movies that indulge in the fantastical are a great thing, and the pervasiveness of the “genre film” over the last four decades has meant that The Wizard of Oz is responsible for just as many extraordinary descendants (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Princess Bride, Spirited Away, Star Wars) as it is for the lesser products of a destructively capitalist entertainment system. Indeed the film is a monument not just for creating a new kind of movie that could be insanely profitable, but for filling out that movie with deep meaning, compelling ideas, and talented artistry that could hook us like no other motion picture of that time. Because in a world of witches and wizards, talking scarecrows and flying monkeys, anything could happen.

Oz was the cinema’s first great fantasy world, and what impressed me on re-watch was that how even with limited environments (a total of about seven or eight sets), the world is so rich and alive. As an adult I can see where the set ends and the matte painting begins but I feel just as engrossed as I did as a child. Munchkinland, the Yellow Brick Road, the Emerald City, the spooky forest supposedly full of lions and tigers and bears, all still feel real. Now I could list the technical reasons this is the case: the immense attention to detail in each aspect of the production, the performances that sap every ounce of endearing warmth out of otherwise slight characters, etc; but the storytelling method might be the most important. 

The journey is one of fantasy’s most enduring staples, whether it be a driven, evolving quest or an episodic odyssey, but it only ever means as much as the strength of its purpose. You ever noticed that Dorothy’s character arc was complete before she arrived in Oz? She learned from Professor Marvel that running away was a mistake, was reminded that she loves Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, and that there’s no place like home. So when her immediate enchantment with Oz is followed up by a desire to return, we relate to the truth of her conviction. The challenges, detours, and obstacles in her way thus become tests of the durability of that conviction, and are rendered to Dorothy more palpable as a result. And because Oz is so vivid and real to Dorothy, it’s vivid and real to us. Through that choice of having Dorothy learn her lesson before the adventure begins (none of the Kansas plot thread appears in the novel), we’re ingratiated to her and her point of view from the moment she sets foot in Munchkinland; and we have permission, like her, to be awed in both the enthusiastic and the fearful sense by all she encounters there.

And there’s plenty to be enthusiastic and fearful of: wondrous cities, foreboding rulers, kindly strangers, hideously malicious enemies. Oz is not complex, but that gives it a mystique in a genre where every land and race and magical system seemingly has to have a hefty explanation. Though it may come as a surprise to all the Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and even Harry Potter junkies, The Wizard of Oz is great fantasy, worthy of a place among any of those titans; not only because it facilitated their existence but because it stands as a work on its own. It’s a much simpler, purer form of fantasy, but there’s the same degree of meaning to it.

With such archetypal characters and places, of course there would spring up a bunch of allegorical readings –the book inspired even more; interpretations of political, historical, religious, psychological parallels that are certain to come with any story told in a very Dantean fashion. But it’s what the movie is more clearly about, the feelings it’s resonating that matter. Roger Ebert noted that “its underlying story penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs them and then reassures them.” The greatest works of fantasy are the ones that through the magic and otherworldly places, the larger than life heroes and villains, are bound by a deep humanism. It’s why some writing in the genre that exists only to express an imagined world, a war, some archetypes of a different variety isn’t met with much success. The Wizard of Oz grabs us by the heartstrings when we’re young, revelling in our fears, hopes, and anxieties, and doesn’t let go into our adulthood. 

As lame and flat and uninteresting as her Kansas farm seems to be, we’ll always understand why Dorothy would be so moved to go back there, just as the hobbits of The Lord of the Rings were motivated into their quest to save the Shire. Home is a powerful thing and we know this all our lives. It's why confronting the unknown for the sake of the familiar is at the root of so many stories. We relate on a deep level to both Dorothy's longing for her perfect land over the rainbow and her sense of responsibility to reuniting with the home and family taken from her. She, like most of us, dreams of adventure, of escaping a world of routine and miserable old landladies who would murder her beloved Toto (a fair weather companion if ever there was one). It's not ideal. As we were often tempted to, she runs away. But once in her paradisical world, it's a lot more imposing and much too different, friendly and marvellous though it may be. Think about the first time you travelled on your own, when you stepped off the bus or train or airplane in a foreign environment without the comforts of home. Dorothy's apprehension, discomfort, and guilt takes us back to that space of feeling.

Each of Dorothy’s companions are likewise looking for something to make them feel whole. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion do indeed have the brains, the heart, and the courage they desperately desire -in the case of the former two it’s the absence of the physical that engenders them to their belief and woe. We connect with their insecurities and as children, usually have a favourite (mine was the Scarecrow, because as a kid I often doubted my intelligence compared to my peers). Together, they don’t just become the band of underdogs that would come to dominate a lot of fantasy, but are a living embodiment of the healing power of friendship, filling up each others’ emptiness. Not only does this movie encourage children that there are others out there who share in their difficulties and self-doubts, but it reinforces the same truth for adults by casting adult actors (and by the way, we do not appreciate enough how great Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr are in these roles -each bringing their own vaudevillian talent to parts they would make timeless).

Perhaps the greatest component of the film becoming an ageless classic though, the only live-action movie that’s ubiquitous from generation to generation, is its grand aesthetic of imagination and wonder. Again, the first memory I have of The Wizard of Oz is Dorothy opening her front door onto the glories of Munchkinland -perhaps my memory paints a different picture than how it actually unfolds (such as a surety that she never left the frame), it still became one of the quintessential images of cinema for me. Not only were films of the 1930s generally unconcerned with childrens’ stories, but they were never visually or aesthetically creative on anywhere near this level -even films with strong fantasy elements like Lost Horizon, She, and of course, King Kong. The closest was probably Paramount’s 1933 Alice in Wonderland, though even it paled to the special effects brilliance and epic scale of The Wizard of Oz. But it’s the less thought about intricacies that make the greater difference: the spiral and then labyrinthine nature of the Yellow Brick Road, the blue flying monkeys, the mechanized controls of the Wizard’s illusion (Oz exists as some great crossroads between the past and the future), and everything to do with the Wicked Witch of the West. 

Looking at W.W. Denslow’s illustrations from the book, it’s hard to believe there was a time when the Wicked Witch didn’t have her pointed hat, beaked nose, green skin, and infamous cackle. Yet forces came together, not least of which including the extraordinary Margaret Hamilton (easily the movies’ most delightful performance) to fashion out of strange ideas one of the great movie villains, redefining the mass cultural concept of ‘the witch’ in the process. And all of these creative choices are testaments to thinking outside the box, all of them tell viewers their crazy ideas are valid, are welcome in Oz. It’s extremely liberating for this world, this movie to acknowledge and encourage that kind of unbridled imagination. Anything goes. Most popular fantasies that have succeeded this film have had rules. A fairy princess cannot exist in Game of Thrones. There are no robots in Middle-Earth. Harry Potter will never converse with a talking bear and Hermione won’t melt in the shower. I think the openness of The Wizard of Oz is an incredibly powerful thing, and the reason it still ignites imaginations of all ages eighty years later.

The 1930s was probably the last time period The Wizard of Oz could have been made in, where filmgoers could still accept such broad morality tales and such a necessary suspension of disbelief outside of the fairy tale animations of Walt Disney. In the decades since, but in the modern era especially, there’s been an impatience and aversion to movies that are unabashedly childish; that don’t follow arbitrary logical rules, that have an explicitly clear moral code, that treat fantasy like fantasy. These are core tenets for why The Wizard of Oz has lasted so long, for why it’s so magical and beloved, but in a time of homogeneity, risk-aversion, and nitpickiness, when some would formulate a criteria for what makes a movie good, when there are people who will literally criticize the finer points of physics in a kids’ movie about space magic, The Wizard of Oz may be deemed archaic or even bad.

But there is a place for whimsy in cinema, for simple stories upheld by grand imagination, for worlds without rules and archetypal characters who connect on a base level, even for men in cat suits. The Wizard of Oz has an innocent sensibility and that’s exactly how it must be approached. I’m reminded of the opening statement of Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast urging us to adopt the mindset of a child. This movie that MGM somehow managed to complete in 1939 defied any notion otherwise. “It remains as profound an epic as The Odyssey and The Inferno, as intimate as a girl waking from a dream” wrote Peter Keough in 2002. It was the greatest of dreams.

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