The Wizard of Oz

About the film

Contains story spoilers.

Dorothy Gale's trouble begins with a dispute over her dog, not a wish to conquer a magical kingdom. On a Kansas farm, she feels that the adults around her are too busy to understand how frightened she is of losing Toto. Miss Gulch arrives with legal authority to take him away, and Dorothy discovers that even the family members who love her will not simply ignore it. Toto escapes, but Dorothy runs away because she expects the threat to return. Judy Garland gives this ordinary loneliness the emotional weight that carries the fantasy. The familiar farm, its workers and its worn surroundings establish the people Dorothy wants to leave before she can understand what returning to them would mean.

Professor Marvel persuades her to turn back by pretending to see her aunt's distress, an early encounter with a kind deception. Dorothy reaches the farm as a cyclone approaches, but cannot get into the storm shelter. A window strikes her, and the house rises into the storm in the adventure that follows. The Kansas world gives way to an intensely colored Munchkinland, where the house has landed on the Wicked Witch of the East. Dorothy has inadvertently freed its inhabitants and inherited a dangerous conflict. Glinda places the dead witch's ruby slippers on her feet, while the Wicked Witch of the West demands them. A girl trying to protect one small dog now possesses something a powerful enemy wants.

The yellow brick road offers a reassuringly clear instruction: follow it to the Emerald City and ask the Wizard for help getting home. Dorothy acquires companions whose wishes make them travelers too. The Scarecrow wants a brain, the Tin Man wants a heart, and the Cowardly Lion wants courage. Each introduces himself through a supposed absence, yet their behavior complicates those descriptions. The Scarecrow can help think through a problem, the Tin Man is readily moved by another person's distress, and the Lion continues into danger despite feeling afraid. Their songs let them explain how they imagine becoming complete. The journey begins demonstrating what they can do before an official authority has certified it.

Oz is inviting without being consistently safe. The companions move through a landscape where trees, fields and paths can answer back or become obstacles, and the Witch can watch their progress from a distance. The Emerald City appears to contain the organized power that will settle their problems, complete with a gatekeeper and the elaborate presentation of the Wizard himself. His huge face and commanding voice seem to justify their fear of approaching him. He agrees to consider their requests only if they bring him the Witch's broom, sending people who have asked for help toward the person most likely to harm them. The apparently final destination becomes the source of another dangerous assignment.

The Witch's flying monkeys capture Dorothy and Toto, separating her from the companions who have made the journey possible. In the castle, an hourglass gives captivity a visible deadline. Toto escapes and leads the others to her, turning the dog whose safety began the story into an agent of rescue. Their courage is expressed through a plan they carry out while still frightened. When the group is cornered, the Witch sets the Scarecrow's arm alight. Dorothy throws water to save him and accidentally drenches the Witch, who melts away. The victory comes from responding to a friend's danger, without Dorothy needing to become the sort of ruler her enemy has been.

Returning with the broom does not immediately produce the promised reward. Toto pulls back a curtain and exposes an ordinary man operating the Wizard's machinery. The voice and image that made him seem omnipotent were a performance. He can still offer the companions recognition, giving them tokens that name qualities they have already displayed, but the gestures work through reassurance rather than a magical transformation. Dorothy's problem is more concrete: she needs transport. The Wizard plans to leave in a balloon and take her along, but she steps away after Toto and misses its departure. Discovering the machinery behind authority has not automatically supplied a road back to Kansas.

Glinda returns and explains that the slippers can bring Dorothy home. Dorothy says goodbye to companions who have changed what traveling means to her, then uses their magic and wakes in her own bed. The people around her resemble the figures she met in Oz, giving the adventure a link to the farm she originally wanted to escape. The waking scene frames her journey as a dream, although Dorothy's conviction preserves its emotional reality. She has not returned with treasure or proof that the Wizard can govern a distant land. Her understanding of home has changed through being helped by people she initially encountered as strangers and through discovering that she could help them too.

The 1939 film combines the scale of a storybook with performances that keep the travelers close to a child's experience. Ray Bolger's loose physical movement makes the Scarecrow seem precariously assembled, Jack Haley gives the Tin Man a gentle formality, and Bert Lahr makes the Lion's enormous appearance coexist with nervous self-consciousness. Margaret Hamilton's Witch moves through the same bright world as a force of hostility rather than a misunderstood companion. Music supplies an introduction, a shared traveling rhythm and moments in which a private wish can fill the screen. Garland's presence connects those changes in tone, so the spectacular colors and elaborate costumes remain part of one girl's search for a place where she and Toto are safe.