The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz 'was my very first literary influence,' writes Salman Rushdie in his

account of the great MGM children's classic. At the age of ten he had written a story, 'Over the Rainbow', about a colourful fantasy world. But for Rushdie The Wizard of Oz

is more than a children's film, and more than a fantasy. It's a story whose driving

force is the inadequacy of adults, in which 'the weakness of grown-ups forces

children to take control of their own destinies'. And Rushdie rejects the conventional

view that its fantasy of escape from reality ends with a comforting return to home, sweet home. On the contrary, it is a film that speaks to the exile. The Wizard of Oz

shows that imagination can become reality, that there is no such place like home,

or rather that the only home is the one we make for ourselves.

Rushdie's brilliant insights into a film more often seen than written about are

rounded off with his typically scintillating short story, 'At the Auction of the Ruby

Slippers,' about the day when Dorothy's red shoes are knocked down to $15,000 at a

sale of MGM props.

In his foreword to this special edition, published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of

the BFI Film Classics series, Rushdie looks back to the circumstances in which he

wrote the book, when, in the wake of the controversy surrounding The Satanic Verses

and the issue of a fatwa against him, the idea of home and exile held a particular

resonance.