The Wizard of Oz is rated as cinema’s most influential film
ITS CHARACTERS are made of tin and straw, but the 1939 MGM musical, The Wizard Of Oz is the most influential movie of all time, a study has found.
Famous for its human star, the young Judy Garland, its early use of Technicolor and its timeless song Over The Rainbow, it beat
Star Wars and Psycho in a league table of 47,000 films.
Researchers at the University of Turin in Italy calculated an “influence score” for films listed in the Internet Movie Database.
Each film was placed in order according to how often it was referenced by a later film. The results showed that the top 20 most influential productions were all made before 1980, mostly in the USA.
The lead researcher, Dr Livio Bioglio, said the method was an alternative to box office takings, which were affected by other factors such as advertising and distribution, and by reviews, which were ultimately subjective.
“We have developed an algorithm that uses references between movies as a measure for success, and which can also be used to evaluate the career of directors, actors and actresses, by considering their participation in top-scoring movies,” he said
Applying the algorithm to actors instead of movies, Samuel L. Jackson, Clint Eastwood and Tom Cruise were ranked the top three.
The only female in the top 10 was Lois Maxwell, who had the recurring role of Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films.
Dr Bioglio said: “The scores of top-ranked actresses tend to be lower compared to their male colleagues. The only exceptions were musical movies, where results show moderate gender equality, and movies produced in Sweden, where actresses ranked better compared to actors.”
The researchers cautioned that the internet data was strongly biased towards films produced in western countries.
The Wizard Of Oz is based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s book, The Wonderful Wizard Of
Oz, about an ordinary Kansas girl spirited away by a tornado.