Last night, on the penultimate evening of the Festival of the Arts BOCA, the Boca Symphonia provided the live musical score for a special screening of “The Wizard of Oz†at the chilly Mizner Park Amphitheater. For the most part, I could barely tell the symphony was there, which is the greatest complement I could pay them.
With the movie running above them, they performed everything from the instantly hummable song melodies to the incidental music to the occasional sound effect, all of which were unobtrusive, perfectly timed and completely immersive. Only a couple of times, toward the beginning of the film, did the loudness of the orchestra drown of the dialogue of the film. The kinks were ironed out immediately, and from then on out, it was a seamless merger of high culture and mass entertainment.
Seeing “The Wizard of Oz†in this context – and for the first time since I was a child – made me realize what a great movie it is to watch communally. It’s a film for which the standard operating procedure of darkened theaters and respectful silence doesn’t, and shouldn’t, apply. Some fans of the movie sung the lyrics and spoke the dialogue along with the characters, while others erupted into applause at key events, such as Dorothy’s Technicolor entrance to Oz or Toto’s multiple escapes to freedom (By audience reaction, Toto is the film’s most popular character). The symphony received a fair amount of applause after dramatic numbers, too. If anything, there should have been more spontaneous crowd reaction, not less.
The film holds up quite well, of course; as probably the world’s first road movie, it’s better than the motley fantasies of today. But I found the second half of the movie to be a less engaging experience, which could be the result of two things. First, perhaps the movie’s final 40 minutes simply aren’t as compelling as its initial 70. But I’m inclined to put the blame on the insertion of an intermission – a 20-minute stoppage right when Dorothy and her new friends reach Emerald City. The film was moving so well, and the break only stymied its progress. I suppose there needed to be an intermission for the sake of the symphony, but “The Wizard of Oz†simply isn’t a movie that warrants one.
