The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children’s novel that was published in 1900 and written by L. Frank Baum and because of its great success, it lead to the creation of the Oz series of thirteen additional books. Over the years, thousands of adaptations have been made of Baum’s novel. The most successful adaptation is The Wizard of Oz (1939) directed by Victor Fleming and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). The film and the novel are both very similar, however there are many differences pertaining to the characters, plot and the series of events throughout the film.
The characters in both film and novel play a very important role in carrying out the story. In Baum’s novel, Dorothy Gale is an innocent, harmless, orphan girl who lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in the gray and dull Kansas. In the film, the gray Kansas is represented by the use of sepia tones. Aunt Em (Clara Blandick) and Uncle Henry (Charley Grapewin) are both given characterization in the film that is not present in the novel. The reason for this being is because film as a visual medium may not be very good at introducing characters as great as novels, so it will only make sense to dwell a bit more in the Kansas scene and create a story to really help introduce the characters well for the audience. Dorothy in the
Mohammed 2 novel seems to be quite content living on the farm amid the dreary atmosphere. However, Dorothy (Judy Garland) in the film, dreams of a better place by singing the song, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. When she is eventually carried away by the cyclone and ends up in the Land of Oz, she is not able to handle the dangers, the responsibilities and immediately wishes to go home. Dorothy in the film is seen as someone who is much older than t...
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...elp Dorothy go home. She does the same thing, clicks her heels and is taken back to Kansas where the story ends. In Baum’s novel, the Land of Oz is a real place, it’s not a dream. It was all about adventure. According to MGM, he thought that society at that time was too advanced to believe in fairytales or even accept it, so he simply turned it into a dream.
MGM’s adaptation The Wizard of Oz may have its many differences when compared to Baum’s novel. The novel is much more in depth, detailed and each character and event is more developed. However, it is still regarded as one of the best adaptations because of its very close resemblance to novel and the use of Technicolor to enhance and bring life to the Land of Oz and the people. The film captured the general theme of the story, that Dorothy’s companions all possessed the qualities they thought they did not have.
Additionally, the dreary and the dullness of the Kansas farm was well depicted in the film version as in the description of how the Kansas farm really appeared in the novel. It is from the way or the very opening of the film with the roaring sounds of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer lion, it was presented in a way which speaks to the audience that it was going to be a black and white film. This was so as they are known for these types of films. Therefore, this opening scene does not only contribute to the differences in the two main places which are the Kansas farm and the Colorful Land of Oz. It helps in keeping the audience aware that Oz is a completely different world from Kansas the dreaded, desolated, weary and gloomy farm. More so, regardless of all the techniques in film making, such as: sound systems, lighting, camera frames, costuming, music, expressions of actors and dialogues, the entire scenes prese...
Frank Baums, The Wizard of Oz is arguably one of the most popular films made. Even though it was released in 1939, nearly three-quarters of a century ago, the film continues to entertain audiences and speak to them in a personal way. The question that comes to the mind when analyzing this film is: What is it about this film that gives it such timelessness? When reflecting on the film’s timeless qualities, it seems clear the plot is one of the things that enable it to maintain its relevance. Primarily, the plot of The Wizard of Oz is timeless because it is such an excellent example of the heroic journey, both in literally and cinematically. This journey of self-awareness is a metaphor for growth, which is something we all search to discover at some time in our lives.
Films are also treasures of culture, filled with clues and insights into the attitudes and perceptions of the people of the day. While documentary films obviously present a historical record of people and events, dramatic fictional movies can also reveal the same. Comparing the main characters in Hitchcock's 1934
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is more than just a mediated artifact it is breakthrough, said to be one of the most famous films ever made. The film was not a box office success, it only received 3,017,000 on a 2,777,000 dollars budget but it still receive a large amount of positive reviews and remakes (). This is important in terms of the audience it reaches because it was not just a children’s movie, or an adult movie, or a movie for teens, it was a movie for the entire family that targeted no specific audience. The Wizard of Oz has won critical acclaim by being nominated for multiple academy awards such as best picture, best original song and is often ranked one of the top ten movies of all time (). The creator Frank L. Baum is very much significant because this was not his first ball game. He was originally an author of children’s books but wrote many novels, sequels and made many attempts to bring his work to stage and screen (). He had a vision like no other and saw things in a different pe...
Shot 1: Wide shot. View behind Dorothy in black and white. Dorothy opens the door to the color world of Oz. She steps out into Oz and stops. Straight on shot, camera moves into Oz first through the door, followed by Dorothy appearing again in the foreground. Light symphonies playing magical music, birds are singing in the background.
Lions and tigers and politics oh my? The Wonderful Wizard of OZ written by L. Frank Baum has become an American classic since 1900 with its simple good hearted storyline, but enough parallels have been found within the written text linking it to politics that suggests otherwise. Baum claims to have written the story solely for the pleasure of children and that he could never have imagined the impact it would have on the public. When the text was adapted to film nearly 40 years later, it became an instant block buster and captured the hearts of the movie going public. It remains an American favorite today thanks to its charismatic actors, dazzling colors, and unforgettable music. But The Wizard of Oz is not the simple tale it alludes to, under its façade of charm lies hidden themes and motifs filled with political symbolism referring to the Populist Party.
Throughout the course of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum implements the use of colors in order to give the readers a sense of urgency whether it symbolizes the danger of the situation which Dorothy and her group are facing or it simply represents the different people in the land of Oz, as they are all very different. Color also plays an important part in both the setting and tone of the story. From the very beginning L. Frank Baum uses colors to highlight the sharp contrast between the land of Oz and Kansas he does so by describing Kansas as a dull, and life less gray place as opposed to the vibrant and colorful Oz, not only did he highlight physical changes but by describing these two very different places the author also manages
the film that was produced after the book, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. The main
Walt Disney needed to change his version and many of his other fairy tales and in doing so started a change in the way we see fairy tales. Ask someone today to define a fairy tale and they will tell you along the lines of a beautiful woman put threw hardships that in the end of the story gets the man and becomes a queen of her own castle.
... narrative that is more common in modernist cinema. But, in development and production the film was modernist in experimenting with cutting-edge techniques such as technicolor and dazzling visual effects for that time. Contrastingly, the depiction of Oz in the 1939 film is one of a pastoral society, and whilst having the bulk of the technological advancements of the era integral to it’s construction (e.g. colour, practical effects) has little in the way of modern technology shown. Kansas on the other hand is also agrarian, but portrayed in a traditional way; sepia-tone, but contains a monopoly on technological progress such as bicycles and farm machinery. This is possibly a device used to exemplify the dreamlike nature of Oz in the 1939 film, clearly a beautiful and idealistic society cannot exist, it must be a dream. Here the film departs from modernism.
In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the author, L. Frank Baum, utilized colors throughout the novel. Colors are a representation of the regions. Baum was passionate about colors to create a good, solid image of his characters, scenes, and events. Whereas, the Munchkin Country is represented by the color blue. The Emerald City appears as green. Yellow exemplify the yellow brick road, and the Winkie Country. Color sets the mood, or an idea of what these regions embody.
Glinda of Oz is the fourteenth land of oz book written by children's author l. Frank baum published on July 10, 1920. It is the last book of the original Oz series, which was later continued by other authors. Like most of the Oz books, the plot features a journey through some of the remoter regions of Oz; though in this case the pattern is doubled: Dorothy and Ozma travel to stop a war between the Flatheads and Skeezers; then Glinda and a cohort of Dorothy's friends set out to rescue them. The book was dedicated to Baum's second son, Robert Stanton Baum.Princess Ozma and Dorothy travel to an obscure corner of the Land of Oz, in order to prevent a war between two local powers, the Skeezers and
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 film directed by Victor Fleming, which follows Dorothy Gale on her journey through the magical land of Oz. Dorothy is swept away from a farm in Kansas to the land of Oz in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return to her home in Kansas. The director, uses a number cinematic techniques such as camera angles, lighting, colour and dialogue to portray a central theme of There’s no place like home.
The adaptation starts with the view of a large, leather-bound book entitled, “Great Expectations”. The book opens and a voice over reads the first few lines describing the character Pip. The voiceover is obviously a grown-up Pip reading. Wind sound effects are heard and the book’s pages are blown over and over until the scene fades to Pip running into the graveyard.
In the words of Michael O’Shaughnessy, ‘narratives, or stories, are a basic way of making sense of our experience’ (1999: 266). As a society and a culture, we use stories to comprehend and share our experiences, typically by constructing them with a beginning, middle and an end. In fact, the order that a narrative is structured will directly impact the way it is understood, particularly across cultures. This idea originated through Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of structuralism in anthropology which ‘is concerned with uncovering the common structural principles underlying specific and historically variable cultures and myth’ in pre-industrial societies (Strinati 2003: 85). In terms of media studies, structuralism’s inherent objective is to dig beneath the surface of a media text to identify how the structure of a narrative contributes to it’s meaning. Structuralism encompasses a large range of analytical tools, however, this essay will examine Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory of binary oppositions. Through analysis of Victor Fleming’s film, The Wizard of Oz (1939), it will be shown that although the monomyth and binary oppositions are useful tools with which to unveil how meaning is generated in this text, structuralism can undermine the audience’s ability to engage with their own interpretations of the film.