The brand-new 3-D conversion of “The Wizard of Oz” had its first press screening in New York Sunday morning on the IMAX screen at the Kips Bay — ahead of public showings later today at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, the latter where the beloved Judy Garland classic made its West Coast premiere in 1939. My fellow classic film fans — some of whom greeted the very idea of this with skepticism if not downright derision — can relax.
For me, the streoscopic “Oz” moderately enhances the enjoyment of a film that was already about as entertaining as they come. It looks fantastic, sounds great, and the 3-D effects (reportedly labored over for 16 months by a thousand technicians) are both subtle and respectfully applied.
“Oz” is by far the oldest movie to ever undergo a full conversion to 3-D after “Jurassic Park” and “Nightmare Before Christmas,” both released 54 years later. Executives at Warner Bros., which has controlled “Oz” since the late 1990s, spent years looking at tests before giving the go-ahead to Prime Focus, which (working with Warner’s superb 2009 restoration and master) has done superlative work under the studio’s supervision. It doesn’t hurt that, at least in my opinion, “The Wizard of Oz” is on a very short list of classic-era films that would actually lend themselves to stereoscopic conversion (or pay for the tremendous expense involved) given that the extra dimension is totally compatable with its musical fantasy and outsized sets.
3-D has been rightly criticized for often dim images resulting from the polarized glasses necessary to watch films this way, but “Oz” is easily the brightest-looking stereoscopic movie I’ve seen (from the ’50s, ’80s or this century) — a faithful representation of gleaming three-strip Technicolor even in the film’s night scenes. It helps that there are so many extended takes — only 650 edits in the entire film, compared with over 2,000 in a contemporary blockbuster of comparable length — and the camera moves relatively slowly by 2013 standards, so your eyes aren’t jolted by lightning-fast edits and quick-moving tracking shots that tend to cause headaches in 3-D conversions.
Kudos to the 3-D technicians who have precisely calibrated the stereoscopic effects, most lightly used (but still noticeable) in the black-and-white Kansas scenes, except for the tornado which was never anywhere quite as effective in 2-D. Most terrifying in the Technicolor main portion is the attack of the flying monkeys, which blows away a similar-sequence in this year’s “Oz, the Great and Powerful,” which was actually shot in 3-D. As James Cameron demonstrated with the conversion of “Titanic,” 3-D is best used to accent important objects and things — like the ruby slippers and the Wicked Witch’s nose. The vintage special effects hold up extremely well — the sole exception being the crude back projection when Dorothy’s house is traveling to Oz during the tornado, which is mostly played for laughs anyway. The crowd shots — the Munchins and the throngs in the Emerald City — are handled nicely. The obviously painted backgrounds in some scenes are gently sculptured.
IMAX (the film is being shown exclusively on IMAX screens in North American for one week beginning Friday) is also credited with doing work on the film, apparently mostly enhancements to the soundtrack. I’ve never heard Herbert Stothart’s score, the Harold Arlen-E.Y. Harburg sounds or the sound effects mix sound anywhere near this effective, not even when “Oz” played the New York Film Festival in 2009. If I could convene a seance, I’d guess that this presentation of “The Wizard Of Oz” would get a big thumbs up in the sky from directors Victor Fleming and (uncredited) King Vidor, cinematographers Hal Rosson and Allen Davey, producer Mervyn LeRoy, production designer Cedric Gibbons and his staff, Arnold Gillespie’s special effects crew — and, of course, Judy Garland, Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Frank Morgan and Toto!
You’re old school and prefer your “Wizard of Oz” in two dimensions? Fine, that version isn’t going to disappear as long as Warner Bros. can continue minting money from it (the copyright for that is currently scheduled to expire in 2029). The 2009 restoration in 2-D is even included in some versions of the Blu-ray release, due out on Oct. 1 from Warner Home Video.