Members who were fascinated by Walter Murch's lecture on the reconstruction of picture and sound on Orson Welles's Touch Of Evil will by now have had a chance to see the movie on a cinema screen. It has been re-released in the form Welles intended. Evidently the objections made by the descendants of Welles to the reconstructed version have been withdrawn. Devotees of Welles and younger cinema goers, who have wondered what all the charisma that surrounds him is about, have also had the opportunity recently to see in cinemas new prints of his masterpiece Citizen Kane. Welles is also back in production. Two forthcoming pictures, The Big Brass Ring and The Cradle Will Rock are based on long lost scripts of his, while Fade To Black, in which the character of Welles turns detective to solve a murder in Rome's famous Cinecitta Studio, is shortly to be directed by Oliver Parker. No clue yet about who'll play Welles. For those who have only seen The Wizard of Oz on TV or video, a treat is in store. Warner Bros are to present a cinema re-release to celebrate the movie's 60th anniversary. The special edition has been given state-of-the-art technical treatment, digitally restored pictures and re-mastered digital sound. Adapted from Frank Baum's children's classic, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, it stared Judy Garland as Dorothy Gail, the eight year-old country girl from Kansas. MGM wanted 10 year-old Shirley Temple to play Dorothy but 20th Century Fox wouldn't release her. So they used 16 year old Judy who was already under contract to them. With flattened chest and acting convincingly below her age, Judy became the definitive Dorothy. The great cast included Frank Morgan as the Wizard; Ray Bolger, The Scarecrow; Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion; and Jack Haley, the Tin Man. Buddy Ebsen was originally cast as the Tin Man but had to give up after 9 days shooting due to developing an allergy to the silver paint make-up. | Billie Burk and Margaret Hamilton were the good and bad witches respectively. The film received five Academy Award Nominations - Best Picture, Best Interior Decoration, Best Original Score, Best Song and Best Special Effects. It took two Oscars - Best Original Score and Best Song - Over The Rainbow. Judy Garland also received a special award for her outstanding performance as a screen juvenile. Included in the special effects was Douglas Shearer, head of the MGM Sound Department, for the development of a system of synchronising the `doctored' voices of the midgets who played the citizens of Munchkin City. In the light of today's technology that might not seem an achievement but remember it was sound-on-film recording, quite some time before magnetic recording in motion pictures, and a good 50 years before digital techniques made all sorts of tricks possible. The kids will love it; young mums and dads will too, and us older ones will howl our eyes out in a flood of nostalgia. BOB ALLEN |
