Summary
The group wanders into the Emerald City, where everything is green. A man pulls up in a carriage and drives the group around, offering to take them to a place where they can tidy up before going to meet the wizard. Dorothy and her friends hop in the back of the carriage, when suddenly Dorothy notices that the horse pulling the carriage is bright purple. They ride around in the carriage as the citizens of the Emerald City and the cabby sing a merry song about Oz. The horse changes to red as they ride, then yellow. Dorothy and her friends go into a chamber where they are cleaned up to meet the wizard.
Several workers stuff the Scarecrow with new straw, singing as they go. Others scrub and polish the Tin Man, while some women spray Dorothy with perfume and curl the Lion's mane. After their makeovers, the group of friends make their ways to visit the wizard.
Their joyful laughter is interrupted when they all look up and notice flumes of black smoke in the sky above them. The witch is cackling and spelling out a message in the sky: "Surrender Dorothy." The residents of the Emerald City look anxious and run to seek council from the wizard. At the door to the wizard's chambers, the guard tries to keep everyone at bay, telling the crowds that the wizard has everything under control.
As the crowds clear, Dorothy and the others go up to the door and ask to see the wizard, but the guard turns them away. "But she's Dorothy!" the Scarecrow says, which gets the guard's attention. The guard goes into the wizard's chamber to announce them, as the group excitedly prepares to meet the wizard and get what they each came for.
The Lion, in particular, is excited to get some courage from the wizard, and goes to stand on a platform, where he sings "If I Were King of the Forest." The group performs a special ritual inaugurating the Lion as king of the forest.
Suddenly, the guard comes out and tells them that the wizard wants them to go away. Dorothy immediately starts to cry, talking about how good Aunt Em was to her, but that she never appreciated it, that Professor Marvel said Aunt Em was sick and it's Dorothy's fault. Listening in, the guard begins crying.
"I'll get you in to the wizard somehow," says the guard, sobbing and opening the door to the wizard's chambers. Tentatively, the group wanders down a long and dimly lit hallway. The Lion has second thoughts and wants to wait outside, spooked by the hallway, but they convince him to keep going.
Eventually, they get to a large room with a giant throne. A face rises above a great throne, and introduces himself as "Oz, the great and powerful." Dorothy introduces herself as "Dorothy, the small and meek." Oz tells them he knows why they are there, and invites each of them to step forward, disparaging their desires one by one. When he gets to the Lion, the Lion faints on the ground.
"The beneficent Oz has every intention of granting your request, but first you must prove yourselves worthy by performing a very small task: Bring me the broomstick of the Witch of the West," Oz says. He dismisses them, and the Lion goes running out, jumping through a glass window on his way out.
The scene shifts and we see a dark forest, with a sign for the witch's castle. The group wanders towards the sign, then towards the castle, when they suddenly notice owls and vultures hooting in a nearby tree. The Tin Man says he doesn't believe in spooks, when suddenly he goes flying into the air inexplicably, then falls to the ground with a crash.
"I do believe in spooks!" the Lion mutters to himself, terrified. The Witch watches the group on her crystal ball, then instructs one of her minions, a flying monkey, to bring his "army" of flying monkeys to the haunted forest to kidnap Dorothy and her dog. "I've sent a little insect on ahead to take the fight out of them," she cackles, advising a flying monkey to be careful with the ruby slippers.
The monkeys fly towards the group in the forest, swooping down and attacking the group, picking up Dorothy and Toto and bringing them back to the castle. They tear the Scarecrow apart and throw his limbs in all different places, and the Lion and Tin Man try and put him back together.
The Witch holds the dog and gives him to one of the flying monkeys. Dorothy asks for Toto back, but the Witch tells her she will only return Toto if she receives the ruby slippers. "The Good Witch of the North told me not to," says Dorothy, and the Witch instructs the monkey to throw the basket with Toto in it into the river to drown him.
Terrified, Dorothy tells the Witch she can have the slippers, but when the Witch tries to take them, she is shocked with a painful electric charge. "I should have remembered: those slippers will never come off as long as you're alive!" the Witch snarls, as Dorothy's eyes fill with tears. As the Witch considers how to kill Dorothy, Toto jumps out of the basket and flees the room, pursued by a flying monkey. As the guards of the castle chase him, Toto jumps from the drawbridge leading into the castle, and manages to escape.
The Witch goes over to an hourglass and turns it over, threatening Dorothy that when it's finished sifting, she'll kill her. Dorothy sobs as she watches the hourglass' pink sand, then sits down and calls to Aunt Em. Suddenly, Aunt Em appears in the witch's crystal ball, calling out to Dorothy and trying to find her. Dorothy calls back to her, but Aunt Em cannot hear her, and the image in the crystal ball turns into the Witch mocking Dorothy's tears.
Toto makes his way down the side of a mountain, then into the forest where he finds the Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the Lion. They follow Toto through the woods and back up the mountain to find Dorothy.
Analysis
Each scene in the fantastical film is another excuse for stunning spectacle and art direction. The Emerald City is no exception, and the most notable element of the place when the group first arrives is the emerald color of nearly everything. People's clothes are green, the carriages are green, the floors and walls are green. Everything is green, and the shots are filled with countless extras, giving the Emerald City the image of a bustling and vital city all its own. Indeed, the green color only makes the purple horse that pulls the carriage stand out that much more.
The film is as much a musical as it is a fantasy, and the musical numbers serve to reveal the inner desires of the characters, as well as create unique and creative pantomimes for the various characters. When the Cowardly Lion sings a song about his desire to be "king of the forest," he affects a regal air, but it is just over-the-top enough to come off as cartoonish and ridiculous. The song is like a vaudeville comedy song, with the added joke that it is being sung by a lion.
By the end of the song, the whole group has joined in, crowning the Lion with the bottom of a broken flower pot and wrapping him with a rug for a cape. The group of misfits forms an unlikely friendship, and the solidification of this conviviality and friendship is often highlighted through song. The viewer learns about their growing intimacy and their sense of loyalty to one another by the ways they sing together and the music they make.
While it seems as though the group has a chance of getting all their wishes granted when they go to visit the wizard, it is not so easy as it seemed. When they arrive in his chambers, his visage is much more intimidating: a disembodied green head surrounded by flames. Not only that, but he is disparaging and intimidating in personality, and he tells them that he will only grant their wishes once they have brought back the broomstick of the Witch of the West. Just as things start to look up, the group must venture yet again directly towards danger.
The film, for all its childlike wonder and joyful optimism, has a darker side, exemplified primarily by the Wicked Witch of the West. The actress who portrayed her, Margaret Hamilton, said that she thought of the witch as a woman who is plagued by loneliness, and this is what makes her so evil. Cloistered away in a terrifying castle, the Witch has no companions but the stoic guards and horrific flying monkeys that do her bidding. After she captures Dorothy, we see the extent of her evil, as she first threatens to kill Toto, then sets a timer for when she will kill Dorothy, and steal her coveted ruby slippers.
