| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Science-Fiction |
|
|
| Horror |
|
|
| Fantasy |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Rating: 
USA. 1933.
Director – Norman McLeod, Screenplay – Joseph L. Mankiewicz & William Cameron Menzies, Based on the Novels Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, Photography (b&w) – Bert Glennon & Henry Sharp, Music – Dimitri Tiomkin, Music Director – Nathaniel Finston, Technical Effects – Farciot Edouart & Gordon Jennings, Settings – Robert Odell. Production Company – Paramount.
Cast:
Charlotte Henry (Alice), May Robson (Queen of Hearts), Louis Fazenda (White Queen), Richard Arlen (Cheshire Cat), Gary Cooper (White Knight), W.C. Fields (Humpty Dumpty), Edward Everett Horton (Mad Hatter), Ned Sparks (Caterpillar), Jackie Oakie (Tweedledum), Roscoe Karns (Tweedledee), Skeets Gallagher (Rabbit), Charlie Ruggles (March Hare), Raymond Hatton (Mouse), Alec B. Francis (King of Hearts), Ford Sterling (White King), Alison Skipworth (Duchess), Polly Moran (Dodo Bird), Jackie Searl (Dormouse), Cary Grant (Mock Turtle), Mae Marsh (Sheep)
Plot: Young Alice walks through of a mirror into the world on the other side where she finds a place populated by a bewildering array of talking creatures and nonsense rhymes.
Alice in Wonderland was the first major sound adaptation of the Lewis Carroll story. (It was the fifth film overall to have been made of the book). There had been an earlier short sound version made in 1931, but this appears to be lost. Many early sound era films were just variations on radio variety shows. Alice was regarded as an all-star spectacle in this regard, bringing out comics of the era like Charlie Ruggles, W.C. Fields, Baby Le Roy and stars like Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton and Sterling Holloway in bit parts. It is usually regarded as a lumbering, stagebound spectacle but to raise the spectre of contrary opinion, this author rather liked it.
Certainly the film treats the book quite liberally, mixing elements from Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (1871) all over the place – the film begins for example not with the famous scene where Alice follows the White Rabbit down a hole (although this scene does occur in the middle of the film) but by walking through the mirror, the less-remembered opening from Looking Glass. This freewheeling attitude toward the book annoyed many Carroll purists, but isn’t so bad, as the film is otherwise surprisingly faithful to the spirit of Carroll and finds a visual equivalent of all the nonsense poetry, unlike the stumbling literalizations of many other adaptations. Far more crippling are the drab and dumpy costumes that the cast is outfitted with, which look exactly like actors kitted out in ill-fitting costumes. Nevertheless some of the character set-pieces come off quite well – the ones we are used to like the Red Queen’s croquet game (which is rather ungainily conducted using real flamingos), The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, the Cheshire Cat – and some we are less used to – the encounters with Humpty Dumpty and Tweeledum and Tweedledee. Especially good is Gary Cooper’s White Knight.
The film was made in an era (the 1930s) when fantasy – even in fantastic cinema – remained resolutely prosaic and pedestrian. The film should be noted for its willingness to let the fantasy fly with all the nonsense absurdism of Carroll – Alice floats down the stairs and literally drowns in her tears. The climax is a memorably surrealistic set-piece featuring talking roasts and pudding and a banquet of flying teapots.The opening with Alice stepping in through the looking glass and finding a mirror-reversed room and the backs of the photos that hang on the wall is quite magical. The shrinking and enlarging effects are done with effective simplicity.
Other versions of the Lewis Carroll story are:– Alice in Wonderland (1951), the Disney animated version; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1972), Alice in Wonderland (1976); and Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer’s bizarre puppet version Alice (1988). There have been numerous tv productions of the story. Dreamchild (1985) is a film based on the life of Alice Liddell, the real-life girl who inspired Lewis Carroll to write the stories.
Copyright Richard Scheib 2001
|