Cultural Impact
Regarding the original Baum storybook, it has been said: "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is America's greatest and best-loved home grown fairytale. The first totally American fantasy for children, it is one of the most-read children's books . . . and despite its many particularly American attributes, including a wizard from Omaha, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has universal appeal."
The film also has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress, which selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1989. In June 2007, the film was listed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. The film placed at number 86 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. In 1977, Aljean Harmetz wrote The Making of The Wizard of Oz, a detailed description of the creation of the film based on interviews and research; it was updated in 1989. Quotes from the film can be heard in many different style films such as The Matrix, Avatar, and Twister, as well as in numerous television shows.
In a 2009 retrospective article about The Wizard of Oz, San Francisco Chronicle film critic and author Mick LaSalle declared that the film's "entire sequence, from Dorothy's arrival in Oz to her departure on the Yellow Brick Road, has to be one of the greatest in cinema history — a masterpiece of set design, costuming, choreography, music, lyrics, storytelling and sheer imagination.".
Several quotes have made the AFI's 100 Years Top 100 Movies Quotes:
- "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
- "There's no place like home."
- "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!"
- "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
Read more about this topic: The Wizard Of Oz (1939 film)
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or impact:
“The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not “Am I really that oppressed?” but “Am I really that boring?””
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)