Victor Fleming enjoyed a long and successful career as a Hollywood director, but he was not the type of creative artist that put a distinctive stamp on his projects to the point that you could watch a movie and know that Fleming was the man behind the camera. Nor was he a master of one particular type of film for the most part the way that Hitchcock is associated with thrillers and John Ford with westerns. Fleming’s career-long capacity to move easily from one genre to another and produce the kind of film that was more than merely competent if not necessarily rising to the status of classic allows the year 1939 to become his career in microcosm. Fleming’s name became the one blared across the screen when it came time to identity the director of not just one, but two all-time, bona fide beyond all reasonable argument definitive moviemaking icons. He was awarded the Oscar for one and arguably was more deserving of winning the Oscar for the other.
It’s not always easy to look at a movie Fleming director and immediately identify how he made it better, but when it comes to The Wizard of Oz, it is far and away easier to identify how the film would have been markedly different had he not been called upon to become the third director hired to whip the screenplay into shape for shooting. Over the course of a just a few weeks, original director Norman Taurog was replaced by Richard Thorpe and Thorpe in turn dumped when Fleming became available. The influence that the model of studio-era dependence upon and acknowledge of the reality that filmmaking is a collaborate endeavor proceeded to wild over the film is quickly made clear by looking what the final product doesn’t have as well as it was it didn’t have before he came on board.
What Fleming’s story doesn’t have is a slightly older, considerably more worldly and absolutely blonder Dorothy Gale that bears little resemblance either to the character we all know and love or the girl in the books the movie was based upon. Under Thorpe’s direction, the familiar born hair parted down the middle and with each side adored with blue bows instead of presented Dorothy has a platinum blonde Flapper leftover from the Jazz Age. Thorpe's handling of the introduction of Dorothy and desire if Miss Gulch to kill Toto would have entirely lacked the panic with which Fleming sets the stage for ill-conceived plan to run away.
And while we’re on the subject of Dorothy’s little dog, what Fleming’s version does not have is a real life animal taking on the job of important character. Thorpe envisioned drawing attention to the fact that Toto is an active player in most of the film’s bit turning points. Rather than trying to create another Rin Tin Tin, Fleming saw the wisdom of not specifically shooting and cutting the film to make it seem like Toto was aware his actions were heroic. Instead, he’s just a dog doing what dogs do except this in case what dogs do have extraordinary consequences.
Another element lacking in Fleming’s vision is a Yellow Brick Path. It’s not a path, it’s a road. Roads are made with paving bricks that that have right angles and feature curbs. Paths have no curbs and deigned with fancy ornamental oval bricks. The Yellow Brick Road thus actually looks like a road despite its questionably garish color palette. His road that looked like a road in place, Fleming’s influence can be felt in one of the most familiar refrains in the history of movie music. To get a full sense of just what sort of aesthetic responsibility Fleming brought to the movie when he took over as director, watch it again with the sound turned off when the cast breaks into “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” as the Munchkins send Dorothy and Toto off on their way. Halfway through shooting the Munchkinland scenes, producer Arthur Freed relied there need to be some sort of musical accompaniment to give their farewell to the Munckinlanders a little punch. Fleming immediately resolved the problem with the keen eye of a storyteller.
The Munchkins had just experienced a rollercoaster of emotions taking them from the joyous celebration of the death of a tyrant to an overindulgent of trust that Dorothy should not become their leader to the re-establishment of fear at the arrival of the Witch of the West to genuine concern for Dorothy’s safety in the wake of the threat made to her by a witch who has just gone from zero to murderous in the seconds it took for Glinda to put the ruby slippers on the young stranger’s feet. About the only character trait or emotion they hadn’t yet had the chance to demonstrate was the reassertion of their own power and authority. As a result, the song that sends Dorothy and Toto on their way to wherever the Yellow Brick Right might lead them is lyrically structured as an exclamatory urgency that simultaneously succeeds in making Dorothy aware of the importance of following the Yellow Brick Road and endowing the diminutive Munchkins with the seriousness of authority to not even stop and question the standing order implicated in the very title of the song: Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
