Endless Hallways #1
Production Design in Moving Image:
Norman ReynoldS — ‘Return to Oz’ (1985)
What brave vision director Walter Murch held in anticipation of an inevitable onslaught of criticism from making a sequel to such a revered film as 1939’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’. ‘Return to Oz’ is a beautifully dark and contrasting jewel of a film, and its production design, so wonderfully crafted by Norman Reynolds, is one of its many enchanting aspects.
The Emerald City, kept watch over by the malevolent Mombi and her flock of Wheelers, is brought to life in all its petrified, decaying, labyrinthine magnificence. Outside, headless statues, turrets, dry fountains, steps, ironwork and crumbling stonework abound, a sad relic of a past quasi-Victorian splendour. Its damaged structures are rendered starkly, not unlike a post-apocalyptic dreamscape, or the fortifications of a bombed-out acropolis.
Interiors are similarly gothic. Mombi’s palace, a cavernous and ominously towered building, is enthralling. What greater moment of production design can be said than that of the hall of gilt and mirrors in which we first encounter her; or, better still, Mombi’s Reich-like boudoir annexed by a corridor of cabinets in which she keeps her interchangeable heads? It is a terrifying and audacious set design for a children’s film, surprisingly graphic — rows of decapitated yet animate heads — and hauntingly reminiscent of a trip to the museum, someplace adult and off-limits.
How often as kids did we dream to reach into the screen, heart in our mouths, and steal the Powder of Life for ourselves...
The film’s other set pieces (including some wonderful mattes) — from Dr. Worley’s dark and dusty wooden asylum, to the Gnome King’s subterranean, geo-psychedelic stone lair — cement the reasons why Oz can be endlessly returned to and enjoyed, its atmosphere capable of being cut with a knife.
Asylum interior 1
Asylum interior 2
Asylum interior 3
Asylum interior 4
Vantage point of the ruined Emerald City
Stone lion
Missing heads taken and used by Mombi
The Wheelers’ warning sign
Dorothy and Tik-Tok down an alleyway
Mombi’s entrance
Mombi’s boudoir
Mombi’s boudoir 2
Mombi’s palace at night
The Gnome King’s mountain
View over The Deadly Desert
Dorothy falls into the Gnome King’s subterranean kingdom
Subterranean corridor
The Gnome King smoking avec ruby slippers