The Wizard of Oz.
A time honoured classic.
In so many ways, the perfect example of a well-rounded, flawlessly written film.
The character of Dorothy, for example, begins the film on a farm, wanting more than just the mediocre life presented by farm life. On the surface level, this narrative seems familiar and tried and trodden, only because such stories of a misunderstood protagonist living far away from their destined adventure, (e.g. “Star Wars” [1977]) borrowed substantially from this idea.
To a modern audience the film’s ending can seem sour and sudden. As a character, Dorothy wants to escape Kansas to a world Over the Rainbow. After her landing in the land of Oz, she sets off toward The Wizard, gradually beginning to feel more and more homesick and spending the rest of the film wishing to go home. From a film narrative perspective, the structure would suggest Dorothy’s actual want is to travel home to Kansas and she spends the entire post-act-one journey attempting to accomplish this. So it should come as no surprise that the eventual homecoming, feels shallow and meaningless. Generally a protagonist’s want is opposite to a need that is eventually fulfilled. The Star Wars example is a young Luke Skywalker wants to leave the farm for a life of adventure and frivolity, joining the Imperial Academy for fun, and throughout the films that follow, he would eventually succumb to his need, (classically the antithesis of his want), and become a disciplined, trained warrior, far from the reckless boy he wanted to become. Note that Return of the Jedi didn’t end with Luke coming home to a farm on Tatooine with his Uncle Owen and Aunt Em… I mean Beru, because, the character changed, the circumstances changed and his relatives were burned alive. The idea of Dorothy coming back home to her family is depressing, the film is a circle, it begins the same way it ends and Dorothy, arguably, has had little in the way of change; yes, of course, she now recognises there’s no place like home, but compared to Oz, home is still a terrible place; how she arrived at that conclusion is beyond me.
The Wizard of Oz, of course, was produced at the dawn of World War II. Though many would credit this social influence as the cause for the lack of dream-fostering, the film is an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s original text which was written over a century ago and published in 1900.
For nearly forty years this story has given faithful service to the Young in Heart; and Time has been powerless to put its kindly philosophy out of fashion. To those of you who have been faithful to it in return …and to the Young in Heart — we dedicate this picture.
The most commonly accepted social theory on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is that Baum as an editor of a prominent newspaper in America, was concerned with the misuse of money and the crippling regime created by the large corporation banks in America with the Wicked Witch of the East and West representing the East and West side banks respectively. Coming out of America and Britain’s great depression does present a convincing reading of the social context, however, it still does not explain the holistic message of the book. The reason Dorothy clicks her heels together at the end of the film and exclaims “There’s no place like home” and gets sent home again, in my mind, makes little sense in the context of the people vs. the big banks saga. In my opinion the book and subsequently the film is all about place and finding yourself within it. Had Dorothy been able to take Aunt Em with her to Oz, the film would have ended with the two of them in their extrinsic house in Munchkinland. Credits.
That, in my opinion is a much more effective ending to the much beloved Wizard of Oz, though, of course, I wouldn’t dream of changing the classic.
“And remember, my sentimental friend, that a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.”
L. Frank Baum