The Wizard of Oz 1939

I said to myself a hundred times that people should watch movies without knowing anything. Most of them have an excellent ploy and I’m so sure that they’d like surprising themselves. It’s an amazing feeling as your jaw drops down in surprise or how you're holding your breath or when you feel your eyes dry because you almost didn’t blink.

I thought of that the first time I read Dracula, I thought: “My word! People shouldn’t ever have known anything, absolutely anything, about this book. It’s fantastic the way you’re finding out everything” Obviously I knew almost everything about Dracula, but it doesn’t matter, I was astonished and I’d like that it could be ever like this with everything, but I know that it’s almost impossible. Almost…. It depends on you. 

In this case, I don’t remember whether I knew anything about the story of The Wizard of Oz or not before I watched it, but that important change after the cyclone… when Dorothy opens the door… I hope people at that time could find themselves surprised.  

The first we know is that  L. Frank Baum didn’t design anything new. Alice in Wonderland in 1865 knew the light before and that parallelism between reality and the fantastic word wasn’t anything new. However, Frank showed us another word and another way to find it, of course, with new characters and a very new story. I could tell you a hundred things about this movie, but I’ll let you search those things here where you’re going to know the secrets about how they created so many things without digital effects that they’re going to blow your mind. I admire those ages when people used to be creative and think and think of how to put in reality those things that are fantastic.

It’s easier to write a book and imagine whatever you want than film a movie. You don’t need any pc computer to create any fantastic creature or world or unreal situation. You just write it down and that’s all. Can you imagine how to “draw” horses of different colours? Or maybe how could they write a line in the sky? How dare they create a twister? Well, they had to think a lot and practice it later and film faster before anything could happen. 

I know that I'm not talking about those details that all of you already know, that's why I wanted to comment on other important things about the movie, things that not everybody might know, although, as I told you before, in this page of imdb you’ll find more and more things about the movie, I am already very amazed about the things I was reading here of rich details, curiosities, short stories… if you like the movie, you have to read this.

Judy Garland was sixteen years old and represented a younger character, but I think she did superb like the rest of all of them. It’s a movie for children and if you’re asking yourself if they cut the book… yes an adaptation isn’t like its original and in this case, if you read the book will find yourself things that on-screen wouldn’t be “pretty” for the children. Maybe, the magic of reading dwells on it is easier to feel less fear than watch the image, I don’t know...

In any case, contrary to popular belief, the film was a failure on its initial release, yes, believe it or not and Rick Polito, a journalist of the “Marin Independent Journal” wrote about the movie this: “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again." ." Well, it isn’t very pretty but The Wizard of Oz was reissued in 1949 (ten years later) and made more money and the critics changed radically. What it hadn’t liked before, now people adored and if you are one of those who think The Wizard of Oz has aged badly, think twice before comparing a movie from 1939 to any other from our age, because people thought about this movie this: “The whimsical gaiety, the lighthearted song and dance, the lavish Hollywood sets and costumes are as fresh and beguiling today as they were ten years ago when the picture was first released. Oldsters over ten who have seen it once will want to see it again." Simply, don’t compare it. It was what it was and of course, none another movie could be similar. 

The Wizard of Oz shall like you or not, but the truth is that The Wizard of Oz cannot live under the earth just because you may think it’s a bad oldie because people talked and talk today and it’s an authentic symbol today for too many things, even people quoted its lines on and on:

"Fly, my pretties, fly" 

 "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!"

"Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore"

 "There's no place like home."

“Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain... only straw.

Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?

Scarecrow: I don't know... But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking... don't they?

Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.”

 (This is my favourite)

 Its message is splendid, The Wizard of Oz talks about friendship, determination, that we don’t know anything and have to learn every day, finding out what we have inside. For instance, those ironic situations of the Scarecrow talking all the time that he needs a brain to have good ideas (the same with rest of the team) but he proves herself throughout the film that he had already good ideas and other things, but he didn’t know, like the rest of the team.

It is, no doubt, good entertainment for each child. They will have fun and sing its songs but as a good classic book that it is, it contains double readings by all means, and that means that adults can enjoy, this book, as well, maybe more than the movie owing to the fact that the movie took only a few fragments from the book. Then again, you don't know the whole story.

Be that as it may, we all should value this movie and re-watch it from time to time. Why not? When it was released on TV was number one every year jumping from channel to another for nearly 40 years, people didn’t get tired of it. Too many scenes were cut in order to get much better production and to have memorable, yes, memorable, you have to admit it, lines, landscapes, characters. 
The song "Over the Rainbow" was ranked #1 by the American Film Institute in 2004 (2004!! 65 years later)  on the 100 Greatest Songs in American Films list. 
Ranked #1 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Fantasy" in June 2008 (69 years later).

And on top of that, in 1989, was added to the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. Are you thinking that it is a bad oldie, yet? Think twice.