THE WIZ 1978
44%
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Written by Joel Schumacher
Starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Lena Horne, Ted Ross
Synopsis
In this psychedelic 1970s spin on The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is a Harlem schoolteacher swept away by a cyclone—during a snowstorm!—and transported to a reimagined New York City, which has been redubbed the land of Oz. To go home, she must find the Wiz and help the friends she meets as she eases on down the road to the Emerald City.
Why We Love It
It’s hard not to wince when reading contemporary reviews of The Wiz. It’s not just the question of “How did these critics get this so wrong?” (because they really, really did) but also, “Why did they have to be such assholes in the way they went about it?” While some critics took issue with the garish sets and some took aim at the quality of the songs, many also took an almost unseemly delight in slamming Diana Ross for being “too old” for the role of Dorothy, the twenty-four-year-old who’s never been south of 125th Street.
But before we do away with that sort of nonsense and pay our due respects to the queen, we’ll pay respect to the film that she—through incredible willpower and forceful behind-the-scenes negotiations—was instrumental in making happen.
The Motown-Universal co-production is constructed like a trip you never want to end, with one indelible image blurring into another: “munchkins” emerging from body-shaped graffiti on the walls of the fluoro-punk Munchkinland; Lena Horne singing in front of a floating flotilla of babies dressed as stars (really); a red-drenched sweatshop manned by monsters and overseen by the Wicked Witch of the West (Mabel King, who also played the role on Broadway). Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon director Sidney Lumet stages the epic set pieces with verve—some 650 dancers reportedly feature in an Emerald City number shot at the base of the World Trade Center—and keeps things moving between songs at a quick enough pace that we mostly don’t register Joel Schumacher’s clunky believe-in-yourself dialogue.
Of the performers, a then nineteen-year-old Michael Jackson is the standout of the supporting cast, managing to register doe-eyed emotion beneath thick layers of Stan Winston’s unflattering scarecrow makeup. (Jackson met Quincy Jones, the film’s music supervisor, for the first time while shooting, kicking off one of pop music’s great partnerships.) But as Oz was Garland’s movie, The Wiz is Ross’s, and she’s dynamite.
Ross radiates explosive joy in the climactic “Brand New Day” and is heartbreaking for the show’s most beloved number, “Home,” for which Lumet holds his camera tight on her face, never moving, never cutting away. The director had clearly fallen for his star, and you’d need to be missing a brain or a heart not to fall right along with him.