"Did Dorothy Return to Oz?" by David and Karen Diket - International Wizard of Oz Club (2024)

(Note: In print, this article was supplemented with photographs and vintage advertising that have not been reproduced here.)

Expectations were high. A sequel to one of the most beloved films of all time, The Wizard of Oz, was to be released the summer of 1985. None other than the Walt Disney Company was to produce the film. What more could audiences want? From the combined magic of Disney and L. Frank Baum, the new film was sure to be a new classic that would captivate and introduce a new generation of children to L. Frank Baum’s world of Oz.

Moviegoers who entered the theaters to see this release were faced with unmet expectations. The vibrant colors and musical numbers present in the MGM film were nowhere to be found. Dorothy’s return was not a happy event, for her or the audience. Critics gave mixed reviews as they compared Walter Murch’s film to the 1939 classic by stating, “Children are sure to be startled by the new film’s bleakness.”[1] “The Disney people have taken such obvious care in making Return to Oz that it’s a shame it didn’t turn out better. It has its moments—mostly visual—but when it isn’t a grim downer, it’s largely inert.”[2] And “the creators of Return to Oz seem forever to shun audiences involvement, sentimentality . . . all the qualities that make for . . . popular entertainment.”[3] These comments beg the question—are all films made for popular entertainment?

Looking at another medium, literature, it’s clear to see that not all literature is escapist; sometimes the author’s intent is for the audience to think. Shakespeare’s tragedies—whether read or performed on stage—show the imperfect nature of human beings and the destruction one individual can cause. Shakespeare’s Macbeth shows the folly of one man’s desire to become king and the consequences of his actions. Are these tragedies condemned simply because they are not bright or happy? A similar question may be asked in regards to Return to Oz.

A film movement called the French New Wave influenced the filmic structure of Return to Oz. This movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s greatly influenced American cinema and changed the way American films are made to this day. New Wave films challenge the viewer and are not crafted in the old Hollywood style depicting unrealistic people with unrealistic lives. During the subsequent American New Wave period, films emphasized darkness, ambiguity, and anti-romanticism. Then, and occasionally today, American films strive to achieve realism rather than romanticism. This New Wave movement still influences films today, from auteur directors, editing techniques (the jump cut), and morally ambiguous characters.

Return to Oz, made two decades after the French New Wave, showcases its influences from that movement. Walter Murch, the director of Return to Oz, is one of the influential filmmakers of the American New Wave. Relying heavily on his past experience and perspective, Murch’s style in this production is a prime example of the New Wave Auteur theory in action, in which a director’s point of view is clearly visualized in the film. Wanting to deviate from the established vaudeville musical approach that brought success to the 1902 Wizard of Oz stage play and 1939 MGM classic, Murch’s film was the first major Oz movie with sound not to be made as a musical. During the 1980s, the live-action musical was dead, further distancing Murch from this dated genre. Although both critics and fan wisdom suggest his film was more faithful to Baum’s books than MGM’s Oz, this assumption is, in fact, not true. While Return to Oz was based on the books The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz, with its visuals modeled on John R. Neill’s art nouveau-styled illustrations, the central theme and message of this “second feature length Oz movie comments implicitly and extensively on the first,”[4] namely the MGM film and not the Baum books.

The original scriptwriter for MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, Noel Langley, was the “first [to] suggest that Dorothy dream[t] her trip to Oz.”[5] The same theme is present and further explored in Return to Oz. In the MGM film, the people Dorothy interacted with influenced her dream of Oz. Murch uses this same idea in Return to Oz (Dr. Worley and Nurse Wilson appear in Dorothy’s dream as the Nome King and Princess Mombi), but Murch suggests Dorothy’s dreams are also influenced by her surroundings (the shock therapy machine and jack-o-lantern appear in her dream as Tik-Tok and Jack Pumpkinhead).

Murch’s directing is very subtle; with its themes and ideas not on the surface level, they are more deeply embedded in the film. Since Return to Oz is the only film that he directed, there are no other examples with which to compare his directing style. One possible comparison is Sofia Coppola. In the article, “The Subtlety of Sofia Coppola,” Laurel Chase explains Coppola’s directing style in Lost in Translation (2003): “The subtlety dominates this film. Sofia Coppola has mastered squeezing the most emotion possible from the simplest gestures. She uses dialogue as a secondary tool and instead uses the dreamy imagery of each shot to move the viewer through different stages of emotion.”[6]

Return to Oz’s editing is another throwback to the French New Wave’s innovative editing style. A “jump cut” is a non-fluid, jarring edit that shows the passing of time. French New Wave director Jean-Luc Goddard used this technique extensively in Breathless (1960). Goddard’s film draws attention to how the film is edited, which old Hollywood shied away from. Return to Oz also uses the jump cut, but rather than drawing attention to the edit technique, the purpose is to show that Oz is a dream.

Dreams are spontaneous occurrences that happen when one sleeps. They rarely have proper beginnings and endings. The lunch pail tree scene in Return to Oz occurs spontaneously, with no proper build up. Dorothy stumbles across the lunch pail tree about as quickly as she leaves it. One critic commented by calling it “brief” and “underplayed,”[7] not realizing the intent is to inform the audience that Dorothy is dreaming. The jump cut is used as a bridge, creating a spontaneous, dreamlike scene.

The jump cut also can be used to disorient the viewer. The sequence leading to Princess Mombi’s mirrored throne room is a prime example. The editing is non-fluid and jarring, cutting before the audience can get a sense of where the characters are in relation to the previous location. The only constant in this sequence is the mandolin music played by Princess Mombi.

The theme of Return to Oz also has origins in the French New Wave. New Wave films introduced the idea of morally ambiguous characters (meaning potentially likable characters that are not necessarily virtuous). One of the first American New Wave films, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), portrayed the bank heisters as not heroic, but more complex than simply “good” or “bad.” Thus, Bonnie and Clyde and many other New Wave films are less about plot and more about the exploration of characters. Return to Oz does not explore its villains in depth, but the main narrative centers on the exploration of the character of Dorothy.

The theme of Return to Oz is a direct springboard from the concluding scene of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, in which it is revealed that Oz was a dream. Murch described this as a ticking “time bomb” that would eventually explode if Dorothy were to divulge her magical experiences in Oz to her family and friends. They would think she was crazy. Murch wanted to convey the “real world problems of a real world Dorothy.”[8] Judy Garland’s portrayal of Dorothy has been romanticized, but Fairuza Balk’s version triumphs with its realistic approach to the character. Dorothy firmly believes she went somewhere over the rainbow. “I lost them . . . they fell off . . . on the way back,”[9] she states, explaining to Dr. Worley what happened to the ruby slippers during her journey back to Kansas from Oz. Yet while on their way to Dr. Worley’s, she exclaims to Aunt Em, “I’ve never been past Franklin before.”[10] These two conflicting statements show her mental dilemma.

Dorothy’s inner struggle in Return to Oz is her inability to understand the difference between fantasy and reality. Her fantasies manifest visually in Doctor Worley’s hospital as she retreats psychologically from the uncomfortable environment. Murch’s directing is very subtle; meaning is created from what is not shown. Each time Ozma appears on screen, she does not have an established entrance or exit. While Dorothy waits for treatment in her hospital room, Ozma neither enters nor exits. She is simply present and then disappears, almost like a passing thought or daydream.

One of the deciding factors in finding the actress to play Dorothy was the following question: “Did you have an imaginary friend?”[11] In Murch’s interpretation, Ozma is like Dorothy’s imaginary friend, and he wanted an actress who could portray this relationship. Just like an imaginary friend, Ozma appears when Dorothy needs comfort or courage. In describing Dorothy and Ozma’s escape from the hospital in her novelization of Return to Oz, Joan D. Vinge writes, “They dashed across the backyard, each clinging to the other’s hand as tightly as if they were joined into one.”[12]

Return to Oz offers a unique picture of a child’s fantasies, but it also shows more specifically how a child envisions herself in her own fantasy. The relationship between Dorothy and her imaginary friend does not end in Kansas. In the land of Oz, her alter ego is Princess Ozma. Subtle clues are given to support this concept, particularly Jack Pumpkinhead’s addressing Dorothy as “Mom.” Jack mistakes Dorothy for Ozma when they first meet by asking, “Mom, is that you?”[13] Since in her imaginary world Dorothy envisions herself as Ozma, it’s her alter ego who created Jack, which explains Jack’s confusion. Exactly when Dorothy created Jack Pumpkinhead is irrelevant, as anything is possible in a dream.

The most obvious visual indication that Princess Ozma is Dorothy’s Oz persona is the restoration scene. Dorothy’s reflection in the mirror is not Dorothy, but rather Princess Ozma. Both imitate the other, walking towards each other, as if they were each other’s reflection. Once Ozma is released from her imprisonment, Dorothy’s struggle is over. She has overcome her inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Ozma tells Dorothy that, “if [she] ever wishes to return to Oz [Princess Ozma] will make it so.”[14] However, in the conclusion of the film, Dorothy does not need to retreat to her fantasies anymore; she can harmoniously live in reality.

David Shire’s score was crafted under the direction of Walter Murch to coincide with this theme. Shire wanted the score to evoke “American music that the character of Dorothy could have heard, since the story is, in a sense, Dorothy’s dream—she’s creating it.”[15] Shire’s main inspiration for Return to Oz’s score was the music of Charles Ives, Sergei Prokofiev, and Béla Bartók, all composers from the turn of the twentieth century. Both Dorothy and Ozma’s themes are constructed to work together, in perfect musical counterpoint. Dorothy’s theme has a beautiful quality to its melody played by violin, but at the same time it evokes Dorothy’s sad, empty emotional state. This is not resolved until the film’s conclusion when both Dorothy and Ozma’s themes are played together, perfectly complementing each other. Murch described the two themes fitting together like “yin and yang . . . a complete individual.”[16]

Film can be just entertainment, but it also can be a means for deeper artistic expression. Return to Oz is the latter. Commonly criticized for its darker elements, Return to Oz is a unique rendition of Baum’s work, showing a Dorothy who overcomes her inner struggles and triumphs in the end. “Murch’s fantasy is free-spirited and uninhibited where so many of its immediate predecessors like The Dark Crystal, Goonies and Gremlins all got bogged down in exhausted clichés. When MGM’s ‘original’—as it’s often mistakenly referred to—wallowed in high camp, slapstick and cornball moralizing—flaws that became quaintly dated and kind of cute years later on television—Return [to Oz] keeps its innocence by seldom patronizing you . . . Murch’s fantasy is fresh and wholly distinctive . . . still showing more than ample originality.”[17] With a better understanding of Return to Oz’s cinematic techniques and themes, expectations can now be met.

[1] Janet Maslin, “Film: A New ‘Oz’ Gives Dorothy New Friends,” New York Times, June 21, 1985.

[2] Jay Carr, Boston Globe, June 21, 1985.

[3] John Fricke, “Return to Oz: The Joy That Got Away,” Baum Bugle 29, no. 2, (Autumn 1985): 11-13.

[4] Richard Maxwell, “A Successful Return to Oz,” Cresset XLVIII, no. 9, (October 1985): 26-28.

[5] Mark Evan Swartz, Oz Before the Rainbow: L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on Stage and Screen to 1939 (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2000), 250.

[6] Laurel Chase, “The Subtlety of Sofia Coppola,” September 25, 2014, http://filmword.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-subtlety-of-sofia-coppola.html.

[7] Fricke, “Return to Oz: The Joy That Got Away.”

[8] “Pod People Episode 4—Walter Murch,” March 13, 2015, http://creaturefeatures.com/podcasts/.

[9] Return to Oz, directed by Walter Murch (1985; Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., 2004), DVD.

[10] Ibid.

[11] “Pod People Episode 4.”

[12] Joan D. Vinge, Return to Oz, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), 41.

[13] Return to Oz, DVD.

[14] Ibid.

[15] David Shire, “The Music of Walt Disney’s Return to Oz,” Baum Bugle 34, no. 3, (Winter 1990): 8-9.

[16] Return to Oz, DVD.

[17] Byron L. Bull, “‘Return’ follows a yellow brick road,” Michigan Daily, July 12, 1985.

Authors of articles fromThe Baum Bugle that are reprinted on the Oz Club’s website retain all rights. All other website contents Copyright © 2023 The International Wizard of Oz Club, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

"Did Dorothy Return to Oz?" by David and Karen Diket - International Wizard of Oz Club (2024)
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