The Wizard of Oz is one of those movies that I’m not writing a review of with the intention of convincing people to watch it, because chances are mostly everyone has already seen it. This movie is one of the most-seen movies of all time, and by many it’s considered to be a real film classic. So, my intention here isn’t to convince you whether or not to watch it. If you haven’t seen it…are you kidding me? Go watch it, now. But for the rest of you, I kind of just want to talk a bit about why this film is considered to be so important, and what some of my personal thoughts are on the movie.

The movie was made after Disney released Snow White in 1937, as movie studios began to notice that films based on popular children’s properties could be successful. And so, The Wizard of Oz was made, an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s book. In the movie, we witness Dorothy’s journey, who begins the movie as a Kansas girl that winds up getting sweeped away in a tornado. She lands in the land of Oz, a mythical land filled with strange characters. She must journey to meet the wizard in order to be sent back to her home, and so the film follows this journey. Along the way, she’s joined by zany friends, and hunted down by a wicked witch. When I describe this, it really doesn’t feel like The Wizard of Oz is anything special in terms of plot, and yet its execution is just magical.

If I’m being honest, I think one of the reasons this movie is remembered so fondly is because it’s wrongly attributed as being the first color film to be made. This just simply isn’t true. Many films before this started to have color in them, and it isn’t even the first film to be fully in color. An easy example of this is The Adventures of Robin Hood, a popular film that came out a year before The Wizard of Oz and was fully in color. I’m not sure where this myth came from, but I think it’s one of the things that seems to impress a lot of audiences.

However, just because this isn’t actually the first color film doesn’t mean that its use of color isn’t impressive. In fact, I think it might be the use of color that makes the movie so remembered for it. The movie very smartly begins in black-and-white, as we see Dorothy’s life in Kansas. It’s only when she goes to the mythical land of Oz that the movie turns to color, and this is a very evocative image that has sat with audiences over the years. We’re able to be impressed by Oz in the same way Dorothy is, because we’re moving from something “boring” to something magical. I also think that color hadn’t been used in films to create a fantasy world in quite the same way that The Wizard of Oz did it. So, while this may not be the first color film, its impressive use of color is probably what makes it be remembered as the first great color film.

This is actually one of those movies that I’m just impressed that it turned out to be as good as it was. If you research into the production of the movie, there were just some real hurdles that could have kept it from being great. I think the biggest example of this is just that the movie went through so many people. It had multiple screenwriters, directors, and actors that it cycled through before eventually landing on what it has. An example of this is the Tin Man, who had three different actors playing the part, one of which was Ray Bolger, who ended up playing the Scarecrow in the end. It’s hard to imagine the movie with a different cast than it has, yet this was almost the case. In fact, Shirley Temple almost played the part of Dorothy before Judy Garland did. There were also many scenes that were cut from the movie, including one where Dorothy was going to go up against a princess in a musical contest. The movie just feels so right the way it is that it’s hard to imagine the movie turning out differently, yet despite all of this it turned out to be really good.

On that note, I should also briefly mention that the filming conditions were pretty rough. The second actor to play the Tin Man had to quit because he was hospitalized after suffering an allergic reaction to the make-up. Ray Bolger ended up having some permanent lines on his face from the Scarecrow make-up. The actress that played the Wicked Witch actually ended up suffering third-degree burns during a filming accident. And then, of course, there was all of the craziness that went in to costuming and make-up for the Munchkin scene. With all of these crazy set-backs, it truly is remarkable that the Wizard of Oz turned out the way it did.

And for what it’s worth, while I do have some gripes with the movie (which I’ll get to here shortly), the movie really is pretty great. It’s a very pretty movie to look at, it has many memorable moments, a really great cast, and some extremely well-done musical numbers. All of these things add up to make a movie that’s just hard to not enjoy. This is one of those movies that just has some real broad universal appeal, and so it’s hard to not like it.

With that being said, I do have one main issue with the movie. If I’m being honest, I don’t think that the second half is nearly as good as the first. It had actually been years since I watched the movie before rewatching it recently, and I kind of forgot what happened during all of the time between Dorothy meeting her friends and them seeing the wizard. All of the introductions to everyone and everything are fantastic, but after that the journey isn’t really all that interesting at times. Sure, it’s fun to see them go up against the Wicked Witch’s army, but there are a lot of other scenes that just aren’t as memorable. I don’t think that the second half is bad, it just kind of detracts from the movie a bit for me.

Despite this, I think The Wizard of Oz does deserve the recognition it gets. It’s rare to find a movie with such universal appeal, and so I think that we should take these movies when we can get them. It’s a very easy movie to recommend, and even though it’s not one of my personal favorite movies of all time, it’s still a really great film. It has a lot going for it, and so hopefully I was able to shed a little bit of light on that. Like I said at the beginning, I’m sure most people have already seen this, but I always find it worth it to revisit some of these classics and talk about why they’re as beloved as they are. It’s worth keeping the classics as part of the conversation so that they’re not forgotten. At the time of this writing, it’s been 80 years since The Wizard of Oz was released, and so considering it’s still loved by many, I don’t think it’s going to be forgotten anytime soon.

4/5