Yellow brick road to greatness

At 85 years, 'The Wizard of Oz' is the gift that keeps on giving

SLOUGH, ENGLAND:

A lime-green witch cloaked in black. Sparkly ruby slippers. And a yellow brick road. If this dazzling series of images does not instantly tattoo the words 'The Wizard of Oz' inside your brain, you missed a rite of passage in your childhood.

The word 'iconic' is now tossed about like a football in a schoolyard, but it is entirely safe to use it for The Wizard of Oz without incurring the wrath of pedants. After all, Wicked may be smashing records and defying gravity as we speak, but neither Cynthia Erivo nor Ariana Grande would be counting their acting award nominations right now had MGM studios not taken the trouble to release the source film in 1939.

And trouble it was. Toxic face paint, a 90-pound sweat-soaked Lion's suit, and a rogue fireball that hospitalised the Witch actor Margaret Hamilton all nearly derailed this gargantuan project. Judy Garland, the world's greatest Dorothy, almost didn't get cast. Over the Rainbow, that anthem of yearning and hope, was about to be ruthlessly purged. And yet despite the behind-the-scenes madness, we have ended up with a film that has become rooted in pop culture and given birth to one of Broadway's most successful shows.

Down memory lane

We start off in sepia rural Kansas, where young Dorothy is continually dismissed by her well-meaning but busy aunt and uncle. A subdued Dorothy sings her beautiful, unadorned ballad about life somewhere over the rainbow, where troubles melt like lemon drops.

Far from melting away, Dorothy's troubles take the form of a howling tornado that whisks her and her dog Toto away to the gloriously Technicolour Munchkinland in Oz. Without meaning to, Dorothy squashes the Wicked Witch of the East to death. All that remains of the witch are her ruby slippers. The overjoyed munchkins revere Dorothy, but she quickly realises she just wants to return to her boring Kansas life, away from this strange rainbow-hued land.

Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, floats over in a pink bubble as the munchkins celebrate. The celebrations are rudely interrupted when the lime-green Wicked Witch of the West drops in unannounced to claim her dead sister's ruby slippers. To her fury, the shoes magically end up on Dorothy's feet. She poofs away in a fireball of incandescent rage, but not before snapping at Glinda to "stay out of this" and warning Dorothy that she'll get her "and your little dog, too."

Glinda sends Dorothy on a quest to find the Wizard of Oz, who supposedly knows the way back to Kansas. She arms her with unhelpful instructions to follow the yellow brick road and never take off the shoes. Dorothy acquiesces, fending off Witch-induced obstacles as she picks up a Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion along the way. The Wizard, a charlatan, sends our heroic crew on a suicide mission by telling them to steal the Witch's broomstick, leading to Dorothy getting kidnapped by the Witch, who then realises that she can do nothing about those infernal shoes as long as Dorothy is alive. She thus informs her that she will be dead within the hour. Toto escapes to fetch Dorothy's friends, who rush to her rescue. Moments later, Dorothy inadvertently kills her enemy with a splash of water.

The Wizard cannot believe the quartet are back to bother him. He is on the verge of throwing them out before Toto reveals him for the fraud he is. Mildly chastised, he claims that they had what they wanted inside them all along and agrees to take Dorothy back home – but things go awry at the last second. Dorothy is at her wits' end. Fortunately, Glinda floats over to announce that if Dorothy believes in herself, all she has to do is click her ruby heels together three times and wish herself home. It works. All is well.

A 'Wicked' lens

A murderous witch and a heroine's quest, at the core of which lies self-belief – all stitched together without a single wasted scene. From an era when making colour live-action films was almost as complicated as actually sailing over a rainbow, could anyone want anything more?

It transpires, yes. Thanks to modern high-definition technical cinematic wizardry, twenty-first century eyes are ill-equipped to appreciate the magic of The Wizard of Oz. The seamless transition from sepia to Technicolour results in a disinterested, "Hmmm", as does seeing a tornado blow a house away. The colourful extravaganza that is Munchkinland yields a peal of derisive laughter, and the sight of munchkin costumes results in unkind snorts. I know this because I forced three twenty-first century viewers – my children, aged 15, 12, and 10 – to watch this classic and was treated to their ruthless critique for almost the entire runtime of 1 hour 42 minutes.

"Wow, these flowers look so realistic and not at all like they are made of plastic," observed the youngest as Dorothy entered Oz. "And those bald caps are just so amazing," added her sister about a hapless bald munchkin. "Check out those shadows from the scarecrow, you can tell this was filmed in a studio," remarked the eldest. "I'm losing brain cells watching this."

These modern viewers are also prone to throwing out sentences like, "She should just give Elphaba those shoes", oblivious to the very real fact that this Wicked Witch is not Elphaba from Wicked at all, despite forming the inspiration for Wicked's green heroine. Inspired by the Witch's irritated, "You stay out of this, Glinda" line, Author Gregory Macguire started fantasising about how things would have unfolded had the pair met at university, resulting in the fan-fiction novel that eventually spawned Wicked.

If Dorothy has the bizarre distinction of being a likeable meek heroine (despite the loss of brain cells she incurs in critical teenagers), Elphaba enjoys the ranks of having the rare villain origin story that does not make you tut. Both heroines also share a unique trademark: an unforgettable staple song. Dorothy's sweet Over the Rainbow, with its octave leap, symbolises a wistful yearning for her safe space – a sequence that has been copied faithfully by David Bowie in Starman, and squirrelled into the 'Unlimited' segment in the film version of Defying Gravity. Elphaba's war cry song takes it a step further and goes even higher than an octave leap as she sings about how she is through with playing by the rules of someone else's game. The difference between both songs is that the novice can easily sing Over the Rainbow while cooking dinner, but you need the lungs of a diva to pull off Defying Gravity. Not that this prevents the non-diva from trying.

So thank you, Wizard of Oz. And thank you, Wicked. If nothing else, you have enriched our Spotify playlist. As a final note, I must apologise to my neighbours, with whom I share a wall, and who by default must tolerate some extremely novice performances of Defying Gravity.