The seminal scene that shaped James Cameron’s entire career: “It has never lost its charm”
Of the four highest-grossing movies of all time, James Cameron has directed three of them. His 1997 classic Titanic became the first movie in history to gross $1billion worldwide and sat atop the all-time earnings list for over a decade. The film that finally surpassed it? Avatar, also made by Cameron, which became the first movie to take $2billion worldwide. As it stands, it is still the highest-grossing film ever made (not adjusted for inflation), with its sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, sitting at third place on the overall leaderboard.
It’s not just receipts that qualify Cameron for the title of ‘legend’. This is the guy who directed the first two ‘Terminator’ movies, who took over the ‘Alien’ franchise from Ridley Scott. His impact on cinema has been truly seismic. Not bad for someone whose first feature film was called ‘Piranha II: The Spawning’.
Where did it all begin for this money-making, industry-shaking icon? Cameron has revealed his admiration for the aforementioned Mr Scott in the past, and he almost certainly looks to Steven Spielberg – the only director to have grossed more than him – for inspiration. However, as a child of the 1950s and 1960s, he wouldn’t have grown up on either of these men’s films. When it comes to the picture that started it all for this man’s revolutionary career, one has to take a trip down the Yellow Brick Road.
“My favourite film is The Wizard Of Oz,” the three-time Oscar winner told Empire. “It’s been with me my whole life, from first viewing on a black-and-white TV as a kid in the early ’60s, to my periodic family screenings of it to this day. It’s still as magical now as it ever was. That moment when Dorothy opens the door and steps out of her black-and-white world into the vivid, Technicolor land of Oz still gets me. The genius of that, and how it must have taken the audience’s breath away in 1939. Now I see it also through the jaded lens of decades of production experience and think about how hot that lion suit must have been under those old arc lights, and how tough actors were in those days. But it has never lost its charm.”
Cameron is of course referring to the legendary moment when Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) lands in Oz after her house is swept away by a tornado. Through a clever mix of set design, stunt doubles, and in-camera editing, director Victor Fleming made it appear that Dorothy was stepping out of the grainy, sepia-toned world of Kansas and into the vibrant, colourful land of Munchkins and talking Scarecrows. It is one of cinema’s finest ever shots, and Cameron was right to be wowed by it.
The Wizard of Oz has had a bigger effect on Cameron’s work than would seem immediately apparent. Terminator 2 is all about John Connor teaching a ‘tin man’ how to have a heart, and Pandora – a magical world where an outsider finds a home – clearly took some inspiration from L. Frank Baum’s most famous setting.
The scene of Dorothy landing in Oz would be historical anyway, but the fact that it inspired one of the most accomplished filmmakers of all time to get behind the camera only adds to its myth.
