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BFI Film Classics

The Wizard of Oz

salman rushdie melvyn bragg richard maltby

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For Rushdie The Wizard of Oz is more than a children's film, and more than a fantasy. It's a story "whose driving force is the inadequacy of adults," in which the "weakness of grown-ups forces children to take control of their own destinies."

69 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1992
Series
BFI Film Classics

This edition

Format
69 pages, Paperback
Published
January 1, 1992 by British Film Institute
ISBN
9780851703008
ASIN
0851703003
Language
English

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About the author

Profile Image for salman rushdie

salman rushdie

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Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023.
Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted notable media attention and controversies, particularly during his marriage to actress Padma Lakshmi.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 80 votes)
5 stars
27(34%)
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80 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Hikitanin
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A short but personal essay on the film, with a smattering of insight into the making of. Don't expect pages of juicy behind the scenes stuff, this really is his personal musings.
His hatred of Toto is quite amusing, as is his querying the state of Munchkinland under the supposedly tyrannical Wicked Witch of The East. Where ARE her soldiers, where IS her gothic castle, why are the houses so well kept, the people so aimiable?
It was interesting to discover that not a single member of the main cast was in fact the first choice for the role . . .
There is a short story included about the auction of the real Ruby Slippers in a post apocalyptic world which wasn't as engaging as the essay, if I'm honest.
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BrownBagBoy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Ho scoperto l'esistenza di questo volumetto, parte di un progetto più ampio creato per celebrare il ventesimo anniversario della serie Classici del BFI Festival.

Amo molto Rushdie come autore, e anche in questo caso il suo tratto distintivo è evidente nello scritto.
il volume si compone di due scritti: il primo è un saggio dedicato al film Il Mago di Oz con interessanti riflessioni di Rushdie, curiosità sul film, sugli attori e approfondimenti sui temi affrontati nella storia di Baum e nella sua trasposizione cinematografica.
Il secondo testo, invece, è un lavoro di fiction ispirato al tema della famosa asta nel corso della quale andarono vendute le famosissime scarpette rosse indossate da Judy Garland durante le riprese del film.

Interessante, ben scritto e con moltissimi spunti di riflessione.
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lostinthevoid
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I really like the British Film Institute's series on classic films (Wizard of Oz being, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest movies Hollywood ever released), and I was very interested in reading such an acclaimed and erudite writer's take on its cultural influence. Rushdie does make some interesting observations, such as seeing the film as a metaphor for the immigrant experience, and how its ultimate denouement isn't really that there is no place like home, but that home no longer exists, and leaving home is really the fantastic dream. I found this essay rather pretentious in its approach to an obviously sentimental, and even magical, classic. Worthwhile if you are a Rushdie fan, but otherwise just okay.
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Karol_At
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Both personal and analytical, this short book looks at the movie and tangenitally at the book. Rushdie has been a long-time fan of both and this book had some interesting ideas that he has been mulling over for a long time. The book also includes a short story that I found pretty darn interesting, but not very enlightening.
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mokuRat
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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really conversational and unaggressively pop culture infused writing. critical and detailed and not just over-adulation

notes
-see threepio
-Dorothy's last name Gale means strong wind
-at the auction of ruby slippers, the short story at the end, makes me really wanna read some more Rushdie fiction
-salman married a babe: Padma Lakshmie
props
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modesto_medicino
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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When I saw the movie when I was REALLY little Ii think 2nd or 3rd grade I'm not sure I fell in love with it but when I saw the book I was not that interested in it because it looked kind of long well for 3rd grade standards. I decided to read it because it actually wasn't that long and it kind of reminded me of a lion the witch and the wardrobe a little because there were witches in it and what not. So Dorthy is the main character and she lives in Kansas but after a tornado she wakes up in another world with her dog Toto. Throughout the book Dorthy is just trying to find a way home with the help of her new found friends and also want something to. I recommend this book to anybody it was actually a pretty good book.
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p_dimi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A slight little trifle of a book, but it was fun to read Rushdie's thoughts about The Wizard of Oz and how it had influenced him.
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dante_deicide
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Aunque soy fan de las novelas de Oz, la verdad es que la película nunca fue de mi gusto. Jamás le encontré lo mágico y se me sigue haciendo una especie de espectáculo gringo que no es cine ni teatro musical. Otra cosa fue "Retorno a Oz" de Walter Murch (1985) que fue el filme que me acercó a las novelas y que es una de mis películas fantásticas favoritas.
Pues bien, para Salman Rushdie, "El mago de Oz" la película de Víctor Fleming , si le cambió la vida y fue la película que lo acercó a la literatura. Este breve librito es un comentario, un análisis light sobre esa película que tanto le gustó. Es interesante de leer, pero no esperen un trabajo de rigor sobre análisis de cine. El libro es parte de una colección de cuatro obras que analizan cuatro películas: "Amores Perros" por Paul Julian Smith; La novia de Frankenstein por Alberto Manguel; "Shoah" por Carles Torner y "El mago de Oz por Salman Rushdie.
El libro se complementa con un cuento escrito por Rushdie sobre la subasta de los zapatos de rubí de la película.
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