‘The Wiz’ 4K UHD Blu-ray Review: The Criterion Collection

“Consider what you’re feeling and know you’re proper as a result of/The time will come round if you’ll say it’s yours,” croons Lena Horne as Glinda the Good Witch of the South (not the North, as in L. Frank Baum’s authentic present) close to the climax of 1978’s The Wiz, a mega-budget adaptation of the funky all-Black Broadway reimagining of Baum’s Oz universe. Cinema historical past is suffering from the shadows of what might need been however by no means was. However not less than within the case of The Wiz, arguably the one all-Black Hollywood studio super-production till Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, it’s each a surprise and a testomony to the kindness of the fates that one thing the good thing about 20/20 hindsight has forged as a real outlier managed to slide via.

And, not less than within the hearts of its underserved viewers, the movie thrives to at the present time. Odie Henderson, in his Blaxploitation survey Black Caesars and Cunning Cleopatras, surmised “The Wiz is way from a fantastic film, nevertheless it’s additionally greater than a cult traditional. There may be real love for the movie all all through Black America, even at the moment.” There’s a purpose why, when actress Erika Alexander speaks to Horne’s Eleventh-hour cameo within the latest Justin Simien-helmed docuseries Hollywood Black, she will barely maintain again tears. They’re tears of gratitude, sure, but additionally arguably intermingled with the sense of disappointment that comes from understanding that the movie’s very existence as a signpost of Black excellence is a lonely one—that its standing as a cherished cultural touchstone amongst Black audiences is, by advantage of the palpable lack of subsequent Black blockbuster movie initiatives within the wake of The Wiz’s field workplace failure, a default place.

Movie followers have put a long time of (white) pores and skin within the sport minimizing the achievements of The Wiz. And in making an attempt to set the report straight right here, I’m painfully conscious that even the Criterion Collection’s heroic choice of the movie to be canonized alongside the numerous likes of Seven Samurai, Jeanne Dielman, Feminine Hassle, and This Is Spinal Faucet has solely opened up one other probability for the movie to be broadly undervalued, and never restricted to the standard gatekeeping on Criterion fan boards. As of this writing, the discharge hasn’t been reviewed by any of the standard suspects, and even Criterion’s website uncared for to clear area with a splash graphic on the week that the disc was launched, as an alternative counterprogramming an additional week’s price of promotion for the forthcoming complete Wes Anderson mega-box. (If there’s a canonical antithesis to The Wiz, it could be Anderson’s more and more inflexible, stuffy, cloistered filmography.)

It might appear circumspect to spend a lot time documenting the present cultural context framing how sure movies attain canonical standing (and others don’t), however in actuality The Wiz itself carries a lot water for a complete cultural legacy that led as much as its manufacturing that it’s hardly out of pocket to hold the baton in that regard. And, frankly, the numerous methods the movie interfaces with that legacy aren’t essentially thought to be progressive, both now or again then.

Director Sidney Lumet surrounded himself with a largely white inventive workforce behind the scenes: cinematographer Oswald Morris, manufacturing designer Tony Walton, make-up artist Stan Winston, screenwriter Joel Schumacher, and a veritable who’s who of high-fashion designers, together with Ralph Lauren, Invoice Blass, Norma Kamali, and Halston. However whereas Lumet’s major contribution to the mission would seem to have been to place the movie’s Oz universe squarely inside the context of “Enjoyable Metropolis”-era New York Metropolis, there’s no denying the movie’s relentlessly wealthy panoply of particularly Black American signifiers alongside the way in which, all feeding into the fantasia on city decay and civic betrayal that was, upon the movie’s launch, extraordinarily au courant.

The unavoidable downside is, most of these signifiers are the detrimental stereotypes that white tradition popularized within the first place. For one, the rubber-limbed Scarecrow (Michael Jackson, in his winningly charismatic movie debut) is launched being restrained in place mentally, if not bodily, by the discouraging snipes of a flock of jive-talking crows straight out of Dumbo. And the Tin Man (Nipsey Russell, ever the consummate showman) is first seen at an Oz-ified Coney Island, being bodily pinned down by his no-longer-animate spouse Teeny, a hulking metallic “mammy” who rolled on high of him when the carnival dried up.

Elsewhere, the emergent confidence of the Cowardly Lion (an ebullient Ted Ross, one of many few holdovers from the unique Broadway forged) manifests itself in pimp-speak overtures. The flying monkeys of Baum’s universe are right here reimagined as foul-mouthed, stench-ridden motorcycling apes, and the harmful opioid-adjacent “poppies” are actually forty second Road (G-rated) hookers. It’s not possible to reconcile this iconography towards the whiteness of the movie’s key makers with out some measure of cognitive dissonance. But when white creators had been broadly answerable for affixing these cartoons to our collective consciousness within the first place, there’s a little bit one thing to be mentioned for The Wiz as a gesture of atonement, given all principal gamers are positioned to stand up towards them and transcend their origin tales.

Nobody transcends extra palpably than Diana Ross. She inhabits the position of Dorothy as much less the naif lady standing on the precipice of womanhood we’re so conversant in, vis-à-vis Judy Garland’s incarnation in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, and extra an grownup who mentally hasn’t caught as much as her age simply but. On this model, she’s a Harlem schoolteacher whose Auntie Em (Theresa Merritt) often reminds her has “by no means been south of a hundred and twenty fifth Road.”

Critics with their knives out for the movie homed in on Ross’s age and the impenetrability of her star persona to pin a lot of the blame for the movie’s failure on her supposed miscasting. It’s true that, circa 1978, somebody of Ross’s stature taking part in a Dorothy affected by “failure to launch” syndrome is akin to, say, Beyoncé tackling the position of Adrian in a musical remake of Rocky. Once more, although, time has been fairly variety to Ross’s full-throated embodiment of self-actualization as a life-long journey, not a vacation spot one merely reaches by this age or that. And the gap she clocks from hiding within the pantry to warble “Can I Go On?” whereas hiding from her family members on Thanksgiving to, within the movie’s beautiful last minutes, holding down the middle of the universe whereas belting a battleship rendition of “Dwelling” is simply that, a journey.

Along with the copious Black expertise in entrance of the cameras, there have been a couple of key Black gamers working the craft facet of the aisle as properly whose contributions can’t be overstated sufficient. Chief amongst these had been choreographer Louis Johnson, whose exuberant work on the “Model New Day” liberation ballet (culminating in a dizzying storm of jubilant sidekicks) does as a lot as something within the movie to underline its dedication to expressions of Black pleasure, and total MVP music supervisor-orchestrator Quincy Jones.

Q’s imperial section arguably kicked off together with his work right here, not solely as a result of it marked the second when he and Jackson first solid the working relationship that may quickly dovetail into the landmark Off the Wall and Thriller initiatives, however as a result of Q as a lot as anybody understood the task: sheer, unabashed, virtuosic excellence. Those that maintain The Wiz fondly of their hearts achieve this largely as a result of the movie embodies the “O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E” that Junior LaBeija a decade later would coin a catchphrase round in Jennie Livington’s Paris Is Burning, and nowhere is that extra evident than in its soundtrack.

Some have argued that Q’s preparations bury the unique materials’s modest charms, however modesty was clearly by no means the mission’s intention within the first place. For Q, it wasn’t sufficient to assemble an orchestra sufficiently big to be two, as he additionally introduced aboard essentially the most polished L.A. musicians accessible: Randy Brecker, Steve Gadd, Bob James, Harvey Mason, Paulinho Da Costa, Anthony Jackson, and Jerry Hey. The double album soundtrack is, in follow, yacht rock, and the glint of its sheen is its personal reward. However Q can also be extremely tapped into the movie’s intention to fold as a lot of the Black cultural expertise into its each fiber, drawing on the traditions of ragtime, blues, disco and gospel with equal dedication (even tossing in a sly “Sesame Road” quote into the “Model New Day” ballet, in tribute, whereas Nipsey Russell advert libs, “Free ultimately”).

Fueled by the best, most aurally expensive-sounding suite of music Q ever mounted, your complete mission arguably reaches its apotheosis within the centerpiece Emerald Metropolis sequence. It’s a seven-minute extravaganza positioned on the plaza between what had been then the Twin Towers of the World Commerce Heart, and a scene invented solely to parade gilded arrival (for each the hop-skipping, Oz-questing quartet and for the movie itself).

However there’s a double-edged factor to this sequence. On the one hand, it’s onerous to not be knocked flat by the sheer scale of the scene. Lumet shot it first up, earlier than the rest, each to get essentially the most demanding manufacturing hurdle out of the way in which early, but additionally one imagines to ascertain a tone of epic scope from the outset. As Dorothy and her crew roll as much as the plaza, they’re notably halted of their tracks by the magnificence of the Oz denizens parading their high fashion. Then again, it quickly turns into obvious that the throngs are altering on a dime when bulletins from above dictate that style has modified course and new colours are actually “in.” By the point they’ve shed their inexperienced duds to don pink, and forged off their pink gear to latch onto gold, you may’t assist but additionally discover that the good washed lots are additionally caught promenading in an countless circle, trying drop lifeless whereas going completely nowhere, all in service of a better energy who will quickly sufficient be revealed to be an utter charlatan.

Like all actually mythic texts, The Wiz points its personal self-critique. For those who select to chase the dream society dictates for you, you’ll watch because it mocks your quest to reside as much as others’ expectations. In that sense, there’s some poetic justice that The Wiz’s up to date “failure” gave Hollywood an excuse to divest from Black cinema solely. As a result of that act of abandonment additionally arguably helped loosen the shackles from Black entertainers from the previous objective of “mirroring” white mental property, setting future generations free to forge their very own narratives.

Picture/Sound

Criterion has gotten to the purpose the place almost all new releases are made accessible on 4K, nevertheless it’s nonetheless heartening that they noticed match to go for a UHD presentation for a movie that, it might probably’t be harassed sufficient, radiates opulence. Working from a brand new digital restoration sourced from the unique digicam detrimental, the movie has frankly by no means seemed so vibrant, so lavishly costly.

Within the disc’s commentary observe, it’s famous that Sidney Lumet by no means meets a large shot he doesn’t love, which is among the many film’s charming flaws. However rewatching the movie for the umpteenth time, this time on a big TV set with 4K capabilities, I used to be astonished by how a lot element and sparkle had eluded me in all my prior house viewing. The lengthy, excessive shot of Dorothy and the remaining crossing an ersatz Brooklyn Bridge as nightfall quickly falls and the jade jewel tones of the Emerald Metropolis begin flickering throughout the decrease Manhattan skyline is however one in every of many such revelations on show right here. It’s actually as revolutionary an improve as I’ve seen lately.

The fundamental technical failing, alas, is the shortage of any audio observe aside from the newly remixed Dolby Atmos encompass. It’s not that the soundtrack isn’t finely calibrated; it’s, using Quincy Jones’s 24-track authentic recordings. However one needs there might have been an authentic soundtrack possibility even simply as an alternate, as a result of amongst different issues the remix incongruously loses a couple of (very minor) audio parts and contours of dialogue. None crucially necessary, nevertheless it’s undoubtedly noticeable in the event you, like me, are among the many film’s rabid followers.

Extras

Within the case of The Wiz, I’m firmly within the camp of “simply give me the best-looking, best-sounding model of the principle characteristic and I’m good.” However, as a result of the vital repute of The Wiz is so virulently contested, it’s heartening that Criterion went the additional distance to incorporate not only a sometimes well-argued booklet essay, this one by critic and podcaster Aisha Harris, but additionally an expertly carried out feature-length commentary observe.

Students Michael B. Gillespie and Alfred L. Martin flip in top-notch work on their observe, analyzing the movie’s place in Black cinema historical past, detailing the finer factors of its manufacturing, paying tribute to the genuinely emotional connection it retains with its cult viewers, and at occasions permitting themselves to get caught up within the splendor of its mere existence. From Martin, together with his dancer’s background, delving into the politics of what “clear” dancing means within the context of the movie’s akimbo choreography, to the 2 of them sucking in a pant upon the arrival of that aforementioned shot of decrease Manhattan (through which the rising solar is changed by, after all, a Huge Apple), it is a observe made by, and for, unabashed followers of The Wiz.

One does want that there have been extra historic dietary supplements, past two temporary clips that includes Diana Ross attending the movie’s splashy premiere and Sidney Lumet (circa 2001) discussing his recruitment of Quincy Jones, however as Gillespie and Martin’s observe even mentions, the movie’s box-office failure in the end meant its archival prospects had been mechanically deemed considerably dispensable. That being mentioned, the virtually stunning stage of contempt on show from the reporter packaging his interview with Ross speaks volumes concerning the movie’s preliminary vital reception.

Total

For any variety of socio-political causes, The Wiz could by no means get its canonical due, however because of its induction into the Criterion Collection, it’s shifting one large step in the appropriate course.