Director: Victor Fleming
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr
Have I Seen It Before: I’ll do you one better, as a ten year old I once shared an elevator with two diminutive elderly ladies, only to later have my parents explain to me that they were two of the munchkins*.
But it is a strange question. Apparently, the Library of Congress has dubbed it as the single most viewed film of all time. I believe it. But something odd did strike me. There’s a reverence to the great movies of all time, and an implication in those cases that seeing it on the big screen is the way to see the film the way it was intended**.
How many of us saw this film for the first time on TV, and likely broadcast on network TV, to boot? A lot of us. If you caught in its original theatrical exhibition then all I have to ask you is how was/are you excited for your 100th birthday party? I was talking with someone recently, and they remembered watching it on a black and white TV, rendering one of the film’s big treats inert.
Did I Like It: And here I am, vaguely but insistently expecting the film to stop at some point so I can see a thirty second spot for the 1993 Ford Taurus.
A movie I live with in that way becomes less and less important as you grow older, if for no other reason that watching broadcast TV has largely gone the way of the dodo. And so I was delighted by it all over again, taking it in as an adult. It’s funnier—well, Morgan in his various roles is far funnier, at any rate—than I remember. There’s a cynicism to Wizard’s bequeathals at the end of the film that you don’t normally associate with the greatest generation. Leaders, intellectuals, philanthropists***… They’re all fine, but ought to be viewed with a little skepticism. Where were all of these folks in the 2020s?
Oh, that’s right. The last time I saw them, they were riding an elevator in the 90s.
*We were at the MGM Grand at the time, and in the 90s that actually made some kind of weird sense.
**Setting aside any strange orbs in Vegas. This review had far more references to Las Vegas than I might have thought going into it.
***Oh, my.