Alice In Wonderland [1966] [DVD]

This remarkable film almost defies description; it's so completely unlike any other film or any other adaptation of Carroll's book. Watching it is like gazing through a crystal ball at someone's confused, faded, half-dreamed memories of childhood in another life and another age, when summers were long and lazy and hot and the world was severe and confusing. Little of Carroll's text is preserved intact; his ingenious wordplay is mainly given second place to atmosphere, so for all its wonderful qualities this can't really be considered the definitive adaptation - perhaps such a thing is impossible - but it does capture aspects of the original that no other version comes close to. Director Jonathan Miller gives a fascinating, entertaining commentary and you can't help but wonder what we would have had if the BBC hadn't insisted on trimming thirty minutes out of it before transmission... though we shouldn't complain too much about that; today, such a fascinating and individual piece of work would probably never get commissioned in the first place, by the BBC or anyone else.

This is certainly one of the weirder takes on the Alice story.

Don't expect to see any actors in tacky animal outfits or jazzy settings of the songs.

Instead... well, imagine a young girl in the late 1800's who has just read ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Then she falls asleep. This film could be her dream. Instead of caterpillars and griffins, you get the various crusty academics, ecclesiastics, maids and governesses who inhabit her waking life.
(Played, incidentally, by a superb cast).

AS a lifelong fan of Lewis Carroll, part of me feels that I should passionately hate this interpretation - but oddly, I think it's my favourite of all the screen versions.

Everything is disjointed and dreamlike. In most of the scenes, Alice is facing or staring away from what's happening. This sullen, wild-haired girl goes through the story in what looks like a state of total disinterest. When she speaks, it's in a sulky flat-toned voice.

If you're a fan of the Alice story, I don't think you'll feel neutral about this film. You may hate it, or you may love it (perhaps, like me, you may love it without quite knowing why!)

In any case, it's something you should really see at least once.

Personally, I rented it, thought about it for a few days, then decided that I had to have my own copy

"Life, what is it but a dream?" This version of ALICE captures that feeling more than any other I've yet seen. I think, ultimately, that's why it works for me.

I could watch this film over and over again. Every time I see it I always manage to see things I never noticed before. Extremely underrated, this very British film version of Alice in Wonderland is probably the best adaptation made. It was created by Jonathan Miller for the BBC in 1966, a time when the Beatles were gearing up for Sgt. Pepper. Despite this the film has a timeless quality and could've been made at any time, and the crisp black and white cinematography (to deliberately resemble Victorian photographs) emphasises this.

The film noticeably breaks away from the cinematic conventions of previous Alice adaptations in a way that makes it refreshingly free of cliche. For example Alice's descent down the rabbit-hole is not done with her suspended from wires in front of a green-screen -- here she runs through the corridors of an abandoned hospital, white curtains billowing in the wind. The actors are depicted without animal masks, dressed instead in Victorian period costume to reflect the time the book was written in. There are next to no special effects in the film and the illusion of Alice shrinking and growing is done simply through changing the furniture size and the use of extreme wide-angle lenses that stretch and distort her. The sets are cluttered with Victorian bric-a-brac, lending a very Gothic overtone to the whole film. This could be accused as being the "arthouse" Alice and in a way it is, but merely because it is so original.

Then there's the stellar cast assembled from a variety of British stars from John Gielgud as the Mock Turtle to Peter Cook as the Hatter. Many have voiced their dislike of this particular Alice, played by Anne-Marie Malik, thinking she stares mutely at the camera too much and that she is too ugly. However I think she makes a super Alice, a departure from the usual chirpy and overly-cheery depictions of the character. With dark, wild, tangled hair and a melancholy expression she seems to have stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. The dialogue is taken straight from the book and, thankfully, there is no Tweedledum and Tweedledee in a film called "Alice in Wonderland". The music is by Ravi Shankar who incidentally would end up working with the Beatles on "Within You Without You", and his use of sitars reflects the drone of insects on a summer day.

This is the last thing I will comment on: the film has a beautifully surreal atmosphere like that of a long, hot day at the height of summer. The montage of the Queen's croquet-game is a series of semi-tableaux-vivants that perfectly captures the feeling of time stretching out as it does on such days. The effect is one perfectly suited to Lewis Carroll: the book, after all, depicts the dream of a young girl who is sitting by her sister on the bank and having nothing to do, on a day so hot it made her feel very sleepy and stupid.

If you liked this adaptation I also recommend Jan Svankmajer's 1988 version and the 1998 adaptation of Through the Looking-Glass with Kate Beckinsale, a low-budget production that nevertheless is very strange and dreamlike.