Movie Minutiae: The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Dorothy et al dance the jitterbug (Photo: MGM)
Bek from The Shallow End and I were talking about freaky film moments recently and she tipped me off to 'The Jitterbug' scene in The Wizard of Oz.
The scene (in which Dorothy and the gang are stung by the mosquito-like jitterbug, which makes them dance a crazy dance in the Haunted Forest) took five weeks to rehearse and shoot, only to be cut after the first preview.
The offical line is that the studio felt it would date the picture, but Bek was telling me there are some netizens who think the dance represents Dorothy's "loss of innocence".
Much of the freakiness of the scene comes from the grainy film quality (due to the fact it was actually a 'home movie', shot by producer Harold Arlen).
If you really want to see how Dorothy thwarted the Wicked Witch's 'dancing with the stars'-style plot, you can read the script for the scene here.
(There's also a reference to the scene in an entirely more freaky film, Mulholland Drive.)
And while we're talking Oz, Sean's post last week on Irvine Welsh's plans for the Munchkins featured a quote from Welsh about the notorious 'munchkin suicide'.
Just in case you were wondering, here's what Snopes has to say about "the hanging munchkin":
"The logistics of this alleged hanging defy all credulity. First of all, the forest scenes in The Wizard of Oz were filmed before the Munchkinland scenes, and thus none of the munchkin actors would have been present. And whether one believes that the figure on the film is a munchkin or a stagehand, it is simply impossible that a human being could have fallen onto a set actively being used for filming, and yet none of the dozens of people present -- actors, directors, cameramen, sound technicians, light operators -- failed to notice or react to the occurrence. (The tragic incident would also had to have been overlooked by all the directors, editors, film cutters, musicians, and others who worked on the film in post-production as well.) That anyone could believe a scene featuring a real suicide would have been left intact in a classic film for over fifty years is simply incredible."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/arts/articulate/200608/s1705632.htm
