The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz

1939

Director: Victor Fleming

Starring: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton

The Wizard of Oz is what I call an “exception” movie.  People who don’t like musicals tend to like The Wizard of Oz, despite the fact that it’s a musical.  People who say they don’t like old movies tend to like The Wizard of Oz, despite the fact that it’s 75 years old.  It’s a film that has transcended its origins and become a part of the national film lexicon.  Everyone and their dog knows, and most likely loves, The Wizard of Oz.

The story revolves around Kansas farm girl Dorothy (Garland) who is dissatisfied with her simple life and longs for more.  When a tornado picks up Dorothy’s house with Dorothy inside it and drops her in the magical land of Oz, it seems like Dorothy’s wish has come true, but she is quick to realize that you need to be careful what you wish for.  Dorothy soon wishes that she can return home to her family and friends in Kansas, and enlists the aid of the Scarecrow (Bolger), the Tin Man (Lahr), the Cowardly Lion (Lahr), and the Wizard himself (Morgan) to battle the evil Wicked Witch of the West (Hamilton) so she can find her way back home.  After all, there’s no place like home.

Now here’s where I make a pretty darn big confession: I am not in love with The Wizard of Oz.  And more than that, I never have been.  (Did I just quote Gilbert and Sullivan? Yes I did. Bonus points to those who can tell me which operetta I just referenced.)

Let me explain a bit more: I do not think The Wizard of Oz is a bad or inferior film.  I think it’s great that so many people know and adore this film.  It just never found its way into my heart the same way it apparently has with the rest of the Western Hemisphere.  And before y’all go screaming at me about having ice in my heart for not being enamored of this film, try to give me a chance to explain.  And stop judging, because that’s not very nice.

I have a theory why this isn’t a personal favorite of mine, and it has a lot to do with my disposition as a young Siobhan.  Like pretty much everyone else, this movie was screened quite a bit when I was a child.  I remember watching it over and over and over again. 

A significant fact you must know about me: young Siobhan was a sissy. 

I hated scary books, scary cartoons, and scary movies.  I remember going to a sleepover in elementary school where one of the other girls was hell bent on us watching A Nightmare on Elm Street and I practically had a panic attack from the very THOUGHT of us watching a horror movie.  I watched Star Wars: A New Hope for the first time when I was six, and the trash compactor scene terrified me so deeply, I pointedly refused to watch Star Wars again for another eight years.

And I think the reason I don’t love The Wizard of Oz is because it scared me too much as a kid, but my family kept on watching it anyway and I couldn’t tell anyone.

So, what parts of The Wizard of Oz traumatized me?

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

1. Miss Gulch trying to take Toto away from Dorothy.  I’ve always had an affinity to animals, even as a youngster, and to watch Dorothy as her beloved pet is forcibly removed from her hands broke my heart.  I didn’t like that, no I didn’t like that one bit.

2. Dorothy being locked out of the storm shed.  As I mentioned early on, I’ve seen this film many many times, but I still got anxious every single time the tornado comes.  It’s as if I thought that hoping Dorothy would reach safety would somehow change the plot of the film.  Just one time, just ONE time, I’d love it for Dorothy to not be stuck outside in a natural disaster. 

3. The first arrival of the Wicked Witch of the West.  SHE APPEARS FROM NOWHERE IN A PUFF OF ORANGE SMOKE.  AND THEN SHE IMMEDIATELY TRIES TO KILL DOROTHY.  The Wicked Witch of the West wholeheartedly deserves her spot as one of the greatest villains of all time because she basically scared the crap out of me as a child, and she is so very frightening from the very beginning on.

4. The moving trees that throw apples at Dorothy when she meets the Tin Man.  It’s how they stand stock still and then start mercilessly beating on Dorothy and the Scarecrow.  I mean honestly, this is the stuff of my nightmares.

5. When the Wicked Witch of the West throws fire balls at the Scarecrow.  HE’S MADE OF STRAW.  SHE’S TRYING TO KILL HIM.  Do you know how horrible it is for a six year old to imagine a beloved character burning to death?  Because that’s what went through my head in that scene.

6.  The scary forest when we meet the Cowardly Lion for the first time.  The set designers did their job when they made this incredibly creepy forest, and every single time Dorothy entered this place, I wanted to look away.

7. The poppies.  The goddamned poppies.  The Wicked Witch drugs our gang to try to stop them.  What’s truly frightening in this scene is how she manages to do this from far away in her castle, nowhere near the Emerald City.  She’s incredibly powerful and insidious in her methods. 

8. “Surrender Dorothy.”  Because nothing says frightening like death threats in the sky.

9. Approaching the Wizard of Oz for the first time.  THERE ARE FIREBALLS AND A GIGANTIC DISEMBODIED HEAD WHO YELLS AT EVERYONE.  THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT MADE ME HAPPY AS A CHILD.  Y’know the Cowardly Lion in this scene?  Yeah, that was me.

  10. The forest surrounding the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle.  Again, I think I hate the set designers of this film. 

   11.  Flying monkeys.  Fuck no.  Stop giving me nightmares.  “Fly, my pretties!” What you just heard was the sound of child Siobhan running away from this movie. 

12.  The hourglass with red sand ticking away the remaining moments of Dorothy’s life when she’s trapped in the Wicked Witch’s castle.  Having that kind of time limit put on her life made me so anxiety-ridden as a child.

13. When the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow go undercover as the guards to break into the Witch’s Castle.  The music (which is heavily pulled from Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, a genuinely frightening classical music composition), the costumes, the dark lighting and dangerous set, all made this a big pile of “NOPE” to me.

14. The death of the Wicked Witch.  You’d think that by this point in the picture, I’d be overjoyed to watch the villain die.  Nope, not scaredy cat little Siobhan, oh no.  I found her death traumatizing, watching her shrivel and burn away as if she is being corroded by acid. 

Yep.  This movie basically scared the pants off of me as a kid.  And I had to watch it over and over and OVER again.  So you’ll pardon me if it’s not a personal favorite.

Now, having made that rather exhaustive list, you can perhaps understand why this film, frankly, filled me with terror as a young child and why I never quite managed to fall in love with it.  And while the things on that list don’t really scare me anymore, I had to watch this movie SO many times as a child and I didn’t have the nerve to tell my parents that it scared me so heartily that I made myself sit through this frightfulness too many times to ever develop an emotional affinity for the film.  

I told you I was a sissy when I was a kid.  Seriously, you don’t understand just how much everything scared me.

Which isn’t to say there weren’t parts of this film that I enjoyed.  The stand out setpieces are easily the Munchkinland sequence and the arrival the Emerald City.  These two scenes are still my favorite parts of The Wizard of Oz, and I DO love them, very much.  Both are happy parts of the film, which meant I wasn’t cowering behind my hands as a youngster.  Both are towering examples of brilliant uses of Technicolor to achieve a fantasy look.  The colors are rich and luxurious, and both scenes are filled with a multitude of interesting side characters.  I love the costuming and set design of both of these lands.  It’s the rotund, Seussian, illustration-feel of Munchkinland, and the sleek art deco design of the Emerald City, all sophistication and smooth lines, that I really love.  Add on top of that two fantastic songs that leave you humming the tunes for the rest of the day and yeah, for sure, these are my two favorite parts of the film.

The Wizard of Oz will always be considered a great film, and rightfully so.  It’s a visual achievement with a heartwarming message, full of indelible characters and charming songs.  But it’s not my favorite.  It’s basically the first horror film I ever saw, and because I was terrible at communicating my fear as a child, I was forced to watch it time and time and time again.  No, it doesn’t scare me anymore, but it’s really too late to reverse the damage.  I appreciate The Wizard of Oz and I can appreciate its stature in the film world, but it will never be a personal favorite.

Arbitrary Rating: 8/10.  Again, I think this is a legitimately good film, full of so many iconic film moments.  But… JESUS it scared me as a kid.

ETA: I will always remember Margaret Hamilton going on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and getting dressed in the Wicked Witch costume in order to show young children that the Wicked Witch was just a character and not a real monster.  

Additional ETA: and yes, I've seen Return to Oz.  And I rather like it, even as a kid, despite the fact that it's exponentially creepier than this film.  The difference was that everyone around me acknowledged that Return to Oz was a scary film and didn't make me watch it unless I wanted to.  I couldn't vocalize my fear of Wizard, so my parents just kept... putting it on.  

Le Jour se Lève (Daybreak)

Le Jour se Lève (Daybreak)

1939

Director: Marcel Carné

Starring: Jean “Studmuffin” Gabin, Jacqueline Laurent, Arletty, Jules Berry

Film noir, as a genre, is most definitely considered an American creation.  French film critics of the 1950s and 1960s noticed that certain American films from the forties and fifties had developed a distinct tone, look, and shared thematic elements, and they coined the phrase “film noir” to describe it.  In spite of the French name, though, they were talking about American films, and most will agree that film noir really started in the early forties.  But I really start to question all of that – that noir is an American cinematic invention, that it started in the early 1940s – when I watch Le Jour se Lève.  I suppose it doesn’t fall as neat and tidily into the film noir category as other classic noirs, but it’s so damn close.  It must have been influential in helping develop the genre.

The film opens as François (Gabin) shoots a man (Berry) in his apartment building, then barricades himself in his room, refusing to open up to the police.  He flashes back to how he wound up in such a situation, starting with meeting pretty Françoise (Laurent), with whom he fell deeply in love.  But Françoise is not as innocent as she looks, and soon we learn of her history with Monsieur Valentin, a dog trainer, circus performer, general con man, and, coincidentally, the man that François shoots.  In between spats of jealousy over Françoise and the lies that Valentin feeds him, François also meets Clara (Arletty), Valentin’s assistant, who knows all Valentin’s tricks and isn’t nearly the picture of innocence that Françoise is.  His life with these two very different women who share him and the dastardly Valentin in common flashes before him and leads him up to the night of the shooting.

 

Jean Gabin holding a teddy bear... my uterus just skipped a beat...

Although Le Jour se Lève is definitely dark, even nihilistic, Carné is smart and doesn’t take us there right away.  He lets the doom and gloom build slowly, and when we see François’ first flashback, he’s positively beaming with happiness.  To me, this is where the film hooks me.  I buy François and Françoise so implicitly as a couple, and I so adore their early scene of pretend homemaking together, that I become emotionally invested in both their fates.  This scene is so important in the film as it points out with humor but also pathos just how desperately François longs for normality in his life.  Growing up an orphan, he feels a connection to Françoise because she was also raised in an orphanage.  As the two of them potter around her landlord’s house at night while the landlord is out, they play act a fantasy where it is THEIR house, THEIR ironing, THEIR children who left the toys out.  This dream of mundane domesticity is everything to François, and he speaks sincerely of marriage and a future with Françoise, and I’m just putty in his hands.  I’m all in.  I want everything for François.  I have bought into the central relationship and the central character of the film, and everything that happens afterward will be that much sadder because of it.

Um, yes please.

Clara and Françoise are an interesting pair of women to involve François with, as they are so much opposites.  At first glance, Françoise is the girl you take home to your parents, all innocence and sweetness and light, and Clara is the girl you ring up for a booty call because you know she’ll oblige.  What I like about Le Jour se Lève is how it subverts these expectations.  Françoise is not nearly as innocent as she looks (a revelation that eats away at François as he contemplates the fact that his darling Françoise is still in love with her shady ex), and Clara has hidden emotional depth.  Every time François thinks he has everything sorted out, every time he thinks he has a handle on one or perhaps both of these women, something new comes to light and once again he realizes he is wrong.  I like these women.  They are more than caricatures.  As the film hurtles towards its gloomy finale, these two opposites are even revealed to have so much more in common than we ever could have thought.  Rather than resigning them to broad strokes, they have depth.  

You have no idea how much I want to be Arletty in this scene.

Shall I go on my typical “Jean Gabin = sex god” rant?  Sure, why not, it’s my review.  Jesus Christ, but Gabin is MY KIND OF MOVIE STAR.  The male actors I find most attractive definitely share certain traits, and Gabin has them in spades.  First of all, he can act.  If an actor is ridiculously awful, no amount of good looks will sway a damn thing for me.  He’s excellent in Le Jour se Lève at detailing François’ increasing desperation as he falls deeper in love yet is stymied too many times by Valentin and his awful hold over Françoise and Clara.   Gabin has to take François from very cheery guy to someone who, whether he meant to or not, shot a man at point blank range, and he has the range to do it.  Not only is he good at showing François’ emotional journey, but he also has the task of bringing François through the standoff with the cops, a harrowing process indeed.  When you add on to all of this the sort of rugged, everyman quality I *really* like in an actor, I’m hooked.  I don’t like my Hollywood hunks to be prettier than me.  I like some rugged, dirty sex appeal, something less dressed up and more organic.  Let’s put it this way – Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire makes my ovaries explode, while Orlando Bloom does absolutely nothing for me.  Gabin has that same sort of Brando-esque appeal.  I can’t help it – I’m crushing on him hardcore.  He acts, he broods, he swoons, he goes crazy, and (shoutout to Movie Guy Steve) his hair is fantastic.  And yes, I'm using this review to shamelessly post sexy pictures of him.

Jesus effing Christ, slice me off a piece of that.

When you take all these elements and add on the noir-in-training of the film, how could this not be a hit with me?  It really shouldn’t be a secret that this film ends badly; when it opens with François shooting someone, you can just sense it’s all going to cascade downhill at some point.  I love the plodding of the soundtrack, moving, unrelentingly, toward the film’s conclusion.  There are drumbeats, like a funeral dirge, punctuating the soundtrack frequently, as François knows only too well what waits for him.  Carné’s photography transitions from brighter lights in the first half of the film to the significant darkness of the second half as the desperation ratchets up to the brink of no return.  

  

I wonder, a bit, at this film being made in France in 1939 with WWII breaking out in Europe.  The sense of fatalism, of moving toward a foregone conclusion, of being unable or unwilling to fight any longer, is this what some people in France felt?  It must have colored the filmmaking; how could it not?  I believe wholeheartedly that those American filmmakers who would go on to create the iconic noir of the next decade must have taken a heavy cue from Le Jour se Lève. 

Arbitrary Rating: 9/10.  And one additional note: when I first started watching films from 1001 Movies, this one was unavailable anywhere.  I am very pleased to see that in the years since, it has been given the Criterion treatment (“Essential Art House”) as it deserves to be preserved and seen.  Also, I smell a Jean Gabin movie marathon in my future. 

The Rules of the Game

The Rules of the Game
Director: Jean Renoir (yes, related to THAT Renoir)
Starring: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Roland Toutain, Jean Renoir
1939  

The Rules of the Game is a difficult film to review for its sheer enormity. Right up there with Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and The Godfather, it is consistently considered one of the ten best films ever made. The only reason you may never have heard of it before is the fact that it’s French, and American audiences aren’t the keenest when it comes to foreign films, but it is a daunting subject for any lover of film to undertake. After all, what can I possibly say about The Rules of the Game that hasn’t already been said elsewhere?

The answer to that difficult question (the question which, by the way, has kept me from writing about the other great films mentioned above) is to regale the reader with my personal relationship with the film. When I first saw The Rules of the Game, it didn’t have much impact. I took it at face value. Man, if there’s ever a film to be a little patient with in order to peel away the outer layers, it’s this one. I then saw it a second time not long after because it was playing on the big screen. Still not that much of an impact. Years passed, and although I had the presence of mind to pick up the DVD when it went on sale, the DVD went unwatched… until today. I did a little bit of reading before watching it, watched the introduction on the DVD by the director, and suddenly found myself entranced, moved, and unexpectedly crying at the end of the film. Now I am starting to understand The Rules of the Game. Now I am feeling its impact.

At face value, The Rules of the Game is a comedy of manners – and I would never say this wasn’t a comedy. The plot centers around married couple Christine (Gregor) and Robert La Chesnaye (Dalio) and their respective lovers, Andre (Toutain) and Genevieve (Mila Parely). A group of guests are invited to La Chesnaye’s country estate for a hunting party. There are machinations, secrets, revelations, and, ultimately, a tragedy. The lives of the servants downstairs blindly imitate those of their masters, as Christine’s maid Lisette finds herself juggling more than one man as well. It’s very Gosford Park in this respect – as a matter of fact, these two films would make a pretty decent double feature.