The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910)
A silent version packs a lot of story into a ten-minute slot.

Dorothy travels to Oz, rescues the Wizard, defeats a witch and celebrates her victory all within the space of 10 minutes, believe it or not, in this 1910 silent film based on a 1902 stage musical.

That's right, 10 minutes. I was skeptical when I first read that, but it really does resolve within that short time.

Of course, in doing so, they take a lot of shortcuts along the way, mainly by never explaining anything. If you had never heard of Oz or Dorothy or the Scarecrow and came into this film cold you would have no choice but to view it as the feverish nightmare of an opium fiend. Instead, the filmmaker assumes a familiarity with the tale, and whole reams of script pages are taken care of in the space of a title card: The Cyclone Carries Dorothy to Oz!

No endless trekking down a yellow brick road in this version.

The film even opens with a false bit of shorthand: Dorothy, accompanied by farm animals that are really humans prancing around in costumes, discovers that a scarecrow hanging in a field is alive! Well, that's one way to save time you might think to yourself, as I did: open with the characters already in Oz. But no, they're actually still in Kansas; the Scarecrow is alive in Kansas!

Try to wrap your mind around what that fact means; you can't. Dorothy and the animals release the Scarecrow from his pole, a living scarecrow in Kansas, then they dance and prance a little, then they all jump into a big pile of hay, just in time to be whirled away by a cyclone into Oz.

There, they discover that the Wizard, who readily admits to being a fraud, is under the spell of a witch, Momba. He has issued a proclamation promising to turn over his job to anyone who can destroy Momba. Dorothy and friends waste little time in accepting the quest, aided by Glinda the Good, who transforms Toto into another human in a costume.

The film owes it's visual style to early French auteur Georges Melies, who used similar techniques to reduce Jules Verne novels down to the span of a few minutes. The action takes place on a rather obviously devised stage, the camera is locked down at an eye level view, and dozens of carefully choreographed actors prance around in front of the camera, including actors being swung around on wires and disappearing in puffs of smoke. There is no editing within the scene itself; the camera runs and the actors act.

The technique is hokey and dated, of course, but also quite economical in terms of storytelling. It's amazing how compact some of the scenes are: Title Card - Dorothy learns that water is bad for Momba - Cut to Momba's castle, her minions milling. Dorothy and party enter; milling milling milling, the witch threatening, Dorothy tosses the water... and scene! Modern movies would stretch the same action out for 15 minutes or more.

The picture quality is quite good for such an early film; this is not a commentary on the films of the time but of its degree of preservation. The restoration work is quite nice.

It's interesting to consider why, in this age where attention spans are supposedly getting shorter, more films aren't shot with some of these same techniques. Instead, with our supposedly short attention spans, fantasy films are actually becoming more literal minded. Let us take, for instance, Spiderman; it could easily tell the same amount of story in 10 to 12 minutes.

Open on a young man at high school, striking out with the ladies – Title Card: Peter Parker, a genius at science, but unlucky with love – Cut back to original wide shot, girls ignore him, but there might be one girl who kind of likes him, from the way she's standing – Cut to shot of school lab, Peter enters and goes to work. He mixes a few test tubes as a large spider descends from the ceiling, representing a normal spider (remember, the close up doesn't exist in this kind of film); the spider bites Peter, he falls down in a swoon; in a Melies style effects shot, a man in a spider costume appears. In a double exposure shot, the spider lies down and merges with the prone Peter Parker. Peter then wakes up and discovers he has spider powers.

I'll let you imagine the rest of the film yourself, but I think you can see that using these techniques you really can tell the story in just a few minutes; just remember that any fight scene can be resolved easily with just a little bit of milling and then someone throwing their hands up in the air, twirling about once or twice, and then falling down.

So that's enough for now about "Spiderman." On second thought, didn't I start out talking about "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"? That film can be seen occasionally on Turner Classic Movies or it is part of a box set — More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931