Retrospective: The Wizard of Oz (Patreon)

Many people know now how the incredible moment where Dorothy first steps into Oz was achieved. Judy Garland's body double Bobbie Koshay, wearing a sepia double of Garland's gingham dress, opens the door of the beige house, revealing the Technicolor world of Oz. The camera pushes through the doorway, panning around the gaudy tableau of Munchkinland, and Judy Garland steps into frame. It's a masterpiece of simplicity; the sort of brilliant deception contemporary VFX artists aren't allowed to think up while Marvel Studios breathes down their necks.

The Wizard of Oz is full of moments like this. The special effects somehow firmly belong to 1939 and haven't aged a day. The movie is visually coherent despite its drastic changes in locale. Maybe it's Bert Lahr's lion who ties it all together: an obvious man in a lion suit who's treated by everybody around him like a real lion.

The movie works dramatically in ways Baum's novel never attempted. We may frown upon stating your movie's themes in dialogue now, but "there's no place like home" does go a long way to holding the movie together. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion discovering they always had what they were looking for puts them on the same page as Dorothy. Structurally and dramatically, The Wizard of Oz ranks alongside The Godfather and The Shining as a work whose achievements tower over its source material.

At the same time, "there's no place like home" makes The Wizard of Oz less appealing than its source material. Whereas the Land of Oz in Baum's books is a heightened realm that liberates Dorothy from the misery of Kansas, in the film Oz is a silly dream, one that helps Dorothy appreciate the wonders of her home. Ah, yes, movie that inspired nearly a century of queer culture, tell me again how wonderful home is when your family is in poverty and a Karen is trying to murder your dog. I can't wait to leave the Emerald City where hordes of women do my manicure and instead return to Kansas during the Great Depression. There's a sickening capitalist realism to this movie that Baum's books rejected utterly. A triumph of a movie, but pretty scummy.