The film will also be shown in theaters, in a digital presentation, for one night only, on Wednesday – for more information, including a list of New Jersey venues, visit FathomEvents .

For those who only remember the film from TV, or old VHS copies, this restoration is a revelation. There’s a warm, almost rosy glow to the sepia-tinted Kansas scenes. The yellow brick road never seemed more golden, or the Wicked Witch more bilious. It’s like a dream remembered.

Tweaked a bit, too, admittedly. Technicians soon realized they’d made the image so crisp that the Hi-Def format now revealed wires and other special-effects gaffes. (They quietly went back and erased them.)

But what’s also clearly visible, again, is how wonderful this film is.

Although the movie began with all sorts of different casting ideas (including Shirley Temple as Dorothy, and W.C. Fields as the Wizard) and ended with last-minute second guessing (fidgeting preview audiences had the studio ready to cut “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”) it all came together perfectly in the end.

Judy Garland – that famous throb in her voice, already, at 16 – is both brave and vulnerable as Dorothy. Frank Morgan gives the Wizard a self-effacing gentleness that Fields would have had trouble with. And no one could ask for better travelling companions than Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr.

They came from different traditions – Bolger was the consummate Broadway hoofer, while Haley was what used to be known as an “Irish tenor”; Lahr’s roots in vaudeville and burlesque were obvious. Yet together they formed a perfect team.

Source: The Star-Ledger - NJ.com