Blu-ray Movie Reviews

$54.49 (Warner) Movie ••••• Picture ••••• Sound •••• Extras •••••

I'll spare you my memories of when I first saw The Wizard of Oz - you'll hear plenty of that malarkey in the many documentaries here - and just cut to the chase by saying that this is a stupendous-looking transfer on Blu-ray Disc, in honor of the Hollywood classic's 70th anniversary.

The film was scanned at 8K resolution (though why, I don't know, since 4K captures everything that's on the three-strip Technicolor negatives) and restored at the 4K level (with no replacement or removal of anything except for dirt and damage). The result: Excellent contrast and sharpness combine to reveal a picture of great depth and dimension. It's particularly striking in the Munchkinland scenes. Often, Judy Garland's Dorothy is in the midground, flowers and crowds of Munchkins are in the foreground, and buildings are in the background - yet everything remains distinct and solid. In fact, it all seems so physical that you feel like you could walk into the image and stroll down the Yellow Brick Road.

The Munchkins' costumes are vivid in their richly saturated primary colors, as is the intense green face of the Wicked Witch of the West (whose cape is also a deep, inky black). There's a wide range of shading in other faces, despite the overall Technicolor glow. As demonstrated in clips from the accompanying documentaries, the Blu-ray image trumps that of the best DVD incarnation because it exhibits no bleeding at all, whereas the standard-def skin tones looked smeary.

What's more, there's fresh detail in every shot, with each yellow brick discernible, each Munchkin-actor expression standing out from the crowd, and those darn slippers sparkling like, well, real rubies. Birds I'd never noticed are suddenly visible - chickens clucking in the sepia barnyard backgrounds, peacocks preening in the forest. The painted backdrops and previously unseen elements of each character's costume and makeup now give images the appearance of picture-book illustrations. Why, you can even see hairs in the Witch's wart!

The most surprising thing about this much-heralded restoration is the quantity of large grain included in the picture - especially surprising for audiences used to the finer-grain stocks of contemporary films. However, this is not akin to the veil of grain that builds up over multiple generations of a movie and is seen in transfers from bad sources. Rather, this is sharp grain in a very sharp film, and it doesn't cloud or otherwise interfere with the beauty of the images at all.

Viewers who have seen the 2005 restoration on DVD will recall that most of the grain there was removed and the picture resharpened afterward. For this Blu-ray release, however, and to create a 4K master identical to the negative, Warner felt it couldn't get away with such processing, because eliminating the grain would mean losing information that should remain visible. And so we're rewarded with a terrific picture that has marvelous resolution and color accuracy - and an amount of grain appropriate to the era.

Both the original mono track and a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix are included, and each is crisp and clear. The surround version is unsurprisingly restrained. But occasionally it's immersive, as when we are greeted by enveloping, heavenly choirs or frightened by the reverberating voice of the great and powerful Oz. A music-and-effects track allows for a better appreciation of the subtle inflections and influences of the score and songs of Harold Arlen and E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, which have fullness and nice bass. A certain amount of hiss remains, but not enough to be intrusive.