Immortal

Rating: 10/10 (28 August 2017)

It's hard to overstate the true significance of this film. The Library of Congress informs us that it is the most watched film ever made. Its signature song, "Over The Rainbow", written for the film, didn't merely win the Oscar for best original song of 1939. More significantly, decades later the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts both voted this song as the number 1 song of the twentieth century. The American Film Institute ranked it as the greatest movie song of all time.
But the film's accolades go on and on. It is one of only a few films listed in UNESCO's "Memory Of The World" Registry. Even in a supporting role, actress Margaret Hamilton turned her Wicked Witch into American Film Institute's 4th-greatest villain of all time, behind Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, and Darth Vader. All of the main actors and many people responsible for the film's technical achievements have received and continue to receive innumerable awards and honors seventy years after the film was released.
From its inception as a children's book in 1900 by author L. Frank Baum, the simple story was retold countless times in novels, stage presentations, and other forms, in many subsequent years, including: 1908, 1910, 1914, 1925, 1933, and 1938. But it was the film of 1939, directed by Victor Fleming, that propelled the story into immortality.
With its perfect 3-Act structure, the script creates iconic characters and iconic dialogue. Some lines have morphed into cultural clichés, they are so often repeated. How many times has the line "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more" been borrowed by hack writers to use in their hack scripts? I think it was Oscar Wilde who said: "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness".
At a deeper level than the well-known story, the film's many allegories have been and will continue to be debated by scholars. Many of these allegories are so subtle they may never be appreciated by viewers, especially in an age when subtlety has been rendered a forgotten art. Is the naïve Dorothy really the American people? Does the yellow brick road symbolize the gold standard? Is the Emerald City a symbol of materialism that we in the early 21st century might equate to Wall Street?
A deep, intellectual script it may be, but the film would be merely great without its underlying emotional appeal to the heart. It's the visuals and music that render the film so beloved by the world.
And when you join the simple, yet intellectual, story with the power of great visuals and great music, you create a timeless expression of the human experience. The summary message is thus conveyed that no matter where or how far you may roam, and no matter what joys and friendships you may experience along the way, after all and in the end, there's no place like home.
It's almost impossible to view this film objectively, critically, so magical, mythical, and powerful has it become. It's a film that does not require a plot summary; it's too well known for that, too burned into our collective consciousness.
Academy Award films, well-made classic films linger with us. But "The Wizard Of Oz" isn't just another Oscar winner or classic film. It is unique, its own category, a one-of-a-kind artistic expression. There will never be another film quite like it. If humans are still around a thousand years from now, someone, somewhere, using some form of futuristic technology, will be watching it, enthralled by its universality, its timelessness.