Since my subscription ends to-morrow, I decided to give HBOMax one last try last night and watched 1939's The Wizard of Oz. The whole movie played without stopping but it was pretty muddy most of the time. I probably should have stopped but I kept thinking it would clear up. How does Amazon, Netflix, and Disney+ do it? How is it, even when my internet isn't great, I can stream HD movies mostly uninterrupted and mostly in good quality? Whatever it is, HBO shouldn't ask for fourteen dollars a month unless they start doing it, too. I took screenshots to-day from YouTube where, of course, the picture is crystal clear.
I haven't seen The Wizard of Oz since I was a kid, not in at least thirty years or so. I was sort of saving it for a night of maximum nostalgia. Surprisingly, it didn't deliver that. It felt more like a genuine time machine, I guess. Hearing the familiar musical cue in that first shot of Dorothy running down the road after crouching a moment with Toto, the feeling I had was a reflexive, "Well, here we are again." The feeling of watching a movie so many many damned times it's downright routine, not a feeling I expect for something I hadn't seen in thirty years. I'm not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing. It does seem shorter now.
I'd say it's a great movie but kind of overrated compared to other Technicolor fantasy films from the period. I prefer Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, Disney's Snow White, Fantasia, and Pinocchio, as well as The Thief of Bagdad. I see in the Wikipedia entry that Salman Rushdie is a big fan of the movie, which makes sense, because so much about what makes it interesting was probably unintentional. It sabotages its own themes in an intriguing way. Dorothy runs away because of this cruel world where her little dog can be confiscated just for chasing a cat and this subplot is quietly left unresolved. There's no reason not to expect Almira Gulch to come back the next day and take the dog again. Frank Morgan appears as a fortune teller before he becomes the Wizard and both characters are shown to be manipulative. He plays on Dorothy's guilt and sympathy to send her back home to Auntie Em. It's not hard to imagine where many interpretations of the film as political allegory end up.
The film shines in a more genuine, straightforward fashion with its songs and performances. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is so powerful on its own, its power ironically adds to the sinister quality of the ostensibly good forces manipulating Dorothy away from freedom and escape. In the end, Glenda has that line about how if Dorothy's heart's desire isn't in her own yard, then it probably wasn't there to begin with. Which is spoken as though it proves she belongs back home, but when you think about the line itself, it actually says absolutely nothing. Which appropriately makes the dream sequence feel more like a dream sequence. Dreams are very rarely moral.
Twitter Sonnet #1472
The jumping coat was leather, brown, and long.
Decisions won a barrel planted late.
The varied voices sing a cricket song.
Important walks produce a roller skate.
A crucial stat replaced the phantom zone.
The endless sky's repealed behind a roof.
Familiar flesh is banned by foreign bone.
A plastic foot encased the withered hoof.
The language drifts in ovals 'cross the plate.
A secret ninja knows it front and back.
We traded boots to buy a single skate.
The tactful man's content in stagey sack.
A magic mix produced a pair of shoes.
The sequin scales were mashed in streaming hues.
