The Wizard of Oz (U)

It’s the original ‘Wizard of Oz’ cleaned up for the big screen. Not only don’t miss it but bring every child in the street, if only to frighten the life out them.

Made in 1939, just a year after the Rex first opened; it must have been shown here.

It tells the story of Dorothy and her new friends on a huge, surreal adventure. I didn’t get it as a kid and hated it at Christmas ever since. But don’t let that put you off. Every child must be subjected to it, like cod-liver oil from a spoon and goose-grease rubbed into your chest every winter until you are 32. The best is the fade from black and white into spectacular technicolour.

The film’s big homespun, American message is ‘There’s no place like home’: Dorothy’s mythic journey seems to reveal that to find one’s heart’s desire, you need not look further than your own backyard. Never mind the hokum, come for the spectacle of early primative film effects . Forget the witch, Judy Garland still frightens me.