The Wizard of Oz (1939), 10 Color

Dorothy Gale is swept away from a farm in Kansas to a magical land of Oz in a tornado and embarks on a quest with her new friends to see the Wizard who can help her return home in Kansas and help her friends as well.
1h 42min || 25 August 1939
Directors: Victor Fleming, [George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy, Norman Taurog, King Vidor (director: Kansas scenes)] (uncredited)
Stars: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton, 125 little people
Bobby Connolly ... musical numbers staged by
Busby Berkeley ... choreographer: scarecrow's dance (deleted from final print) (uncredited)
Dona Massin ... assistant choreographer (uncredited) / assistant: Mr. Connolly (uncredited)


Genres: Adventure | Family | Fantasy | Musical
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/

My only prior 10 was Top Hat ('35), and I dislike the Bojangles number (maybe it should be a 10- or a 9+). Swing Time was the next year, so it wasn't so hard to move on.

I have nothing negative to say about the film. The color, the music, the singing (Judy Garland's), the casting, the acting, the comedy, the scary stuff, the horse of a different color, the costumes, the sets and supporting effects, the dancing (and cutting the scarecrow's dance was just wrong; that's a negative about not-in-the-film): it's all glorious. Add the fact that every song illuminates character and plot (really a first; even Showboat ('36) had songs that were tangential to the story, rather than on the nose), this is the model for elements needed to make a truly good film musical. (And then there's the quality of each element, and the chemistry of it all blending together...)

According to my (mostly prior) ratings, the excellent (9's except *s are 10s) musicals are:

• Duck Soup (1933)
• Top Hat (1935) *
• Show Boat (1936)
• Swing Time (1936)
• The Wizard of Oz (1939) *
• Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
• On the Town (1949)
• An American in Paris (1951)
• Singin' in the Rain (1952) *
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
• Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
• The Sound of Music (1965)
• The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
• All That Jazz (1979)
• The Meaning of Life (1983)
• Chicago (2002)
• The Artist (2011) (we'll see if the 9 sticks when I watch it again; "officially" not a musical)

So the future is bright, brighter than the past decade+. (Duck Soup and The Meaning of Life are 9's because of their comedy, not their strength as musicals.)

Several posts ago, for Broadway Serenade ('39), I quoted a book on LB Mayer regarding movies with messages. It attributes the famous quote "If you want to send a message, go to Western Union." to Mervyn LeRoy, who just happens to be the producer of The Wizard of Oz. The implication was that the quote was in response to a critique of Dore Schary a decade hence. But brother, if a film ever had a message (or two), doesn't WoO? "There's no place like home." "You've always had the power."

Notes to self:

1. If you find this in a theatre, GO! if only to be bathed in this color on a large screen.
2. Skip all the extra dvd features except the deleted scenes. Just re-watch the movie until you've had enough. In addition to getting scarecrow's dance, you see how much restoration was accomplished by contrast with the deleted scenes, which were not given the full treatment.
3. Maybe watch it in b/w (turn off the color on TV) to see what it was like on TV when you first saw it (maybe the first several times!)

MGM; dir. Fleming et al; 10