Alicia en el país de las maravillas

I think this is the closest thing to a "trip" I've ever experienced on film - at times it's a positively surreal interpretation of Lewis Carroll's nonsense story of "Alice" (Carol Marsh) and her adventures having fallen down the rabbit hole. Unlike the colourful, but much fluffier Disney adaptation that followed in 1951, this is a more sophisticated, clever and intricate hybrid of real life characters married with some basic, but engaging, stop-motion animation as she encounters the "Mad Hatter"; "Cheshire Cat"; 'Ugly Duchess" and, of course, the brutally minded "Queen of Hearts" (voiced here excellently by Pamela Brown). I'm not really a fan of the story, and sadly although an undoubtedly creatively accomplished effort from Dallas Bower and Irving Block, this doesn't really do much to sustain my interest. The pace is suitably frenetic, but Marsh is pretty flat in the title role, and the innovative effects of the production start to war thin quickly leaving us with little better than a semi-animated farce of a film. If you enjoyed the wackiness of Carroll's original book, then you may well get more from this than I did, but I'm afraid it was all just too silly for me, sorry.

Produced and released shortly before Disney's feature-length cartoon version, this "Alice in Wonderland" has a curious legal history whereby Disney frivolously sued to delay or prevent its release and the competition it might bring. Curiouser, the two Alice films share a couple important similarities. They're both animated, although in different ways; Disney's is drawn, and this one is stop-motion puppetry mixed with live action. Both regrettably add songs that lend logic and order to what was otherwise a Wonderland of episodic nonsense. And, yes, Alice is a blonde in a blue dress for both. Apparently, the coloring of this one has become degraded in the intervening years and has since not been restored, plus Disney prevented it from being filmed in Technicolor, so it literally pales in comparison to the colorful Disney picture. Moreover, some now claim the Disney film a "classic," whereas this one remains relatively obscure. That's a shame, too, because it's somewhat more faithful to Lewis Carroll's books and especially the first one, and the "reality" framing device is an insightful bit concerning art reflecting life.

The outer narrative shows Carroll's story to be "not so simple, because you will see that Lewis Carroll modeled his creatures of Wonderland on the foibles of real people." This framing, then, is similar to the Kansas scenes of the 1939 "The Wizard Oz," which in turn is based on L. Frank Baum's book that was intended as an American counterpart to the Alice books. And, unfortunately, although not likewise photographed in black and white, as were the Kansas scenes in the 1939 film, the outer narrative here is bland. It sets up that the characters seen surrounding Oxford will later lend their voices and attributes to the inner animated story's cast--most of all, of course, that of Alice Liddell and the fictional Alice, as portrayed by the same actress (an adult one, by the way, which is common in film adaptations). Alice mostly provides voiceover narration of her thoughts, which was surely helpful for translation as the film was released in French and English-language versions. The most interesting part here is the inclusion of Charles Dodgson's (a.k.a. Carroll's) interest in still photography, which adds another layer of reflexivity to a film that already features its author as a character telling the story. This largely replaces the usual dream framing, although this is hinted at, too, by the Alice Liddell's reactions to the story Dodgson tells her.

The main, inner narrative is largely plotted around Alice being chased by the vengeful White Rabbit, whom Alice was pursuing in the first place to land her in Wonderland. He schemes to set her up for the crime of stealing the Queen's tarts after the incident of her causing havoc by growing taller inside his house. Other episodes are also oddly made sense of here; for example, the scene where the mouse decides to recite the driest bit of history he knows--a humorous pun in the book--is turned into a song here, which is hardly dry at all. Nevertheless, the puppetry appreciably lends weirdness to the proceedings, and some of the decidedly-artificial settings are well designed, including the checkered layout of the hall at the bottom of the rabbit hole. The rapid cutting of Alice and the Rabbit running is effective, too. On the other hand, some of the cutting between live-action Alice and the animated puppets seems a blatant workaround to otherwise having to do more composite shots--rendering the fantasy that Alice and the characters of Wonderland are inhabiting the same place less believable. Despite it not all smoothly succeeding, it's interesting how many layers are worked with here, between a real actor combined with puppets and the fictional Wonderland inside the outer world of Carroll as author and photographer and Alice as dreamer of her fictional self.

Here's the good, the bad, and the disclaimer. First the good. The movie places Alice in Wonderland in proper context, with a prologue featuring Charles Dodgson as an Oxfordian who is inwardly iconoclastic but no firebrand, and who enjoys the company of innocent girls a generation younger. As the Alice story unfolds, we can see how it provides Dodgson an opportunity to satirize his own environment. The movie makers invent some parallels, but the inventions are benign and well within the spirit of the original. Dodgson, for example, has furtively stolen a tart in the prologue. Perhaps the most successful aspect of the movie is the stylized sets through which Alice roams. They are completely believable as stage scenery, while on the other hand they can easily accommodate the stop-motion puppets who play the Wonderland characters, so that they smoothly mediate between the natural and the artificial. What's bad about the movie is that the puppets are mostly crude and offputting in their design and movement. If I hadn't seen the year cited here on IMDb, I would have pegged the movie a good decade and a half earlier-- also because of the badly dated music. But the disclaimer I must provide is that the print I saw may not do justice to the movie. It had no color, the sound was less than perfectly synchronized, and the picture was not very sharp. Maybe a good color print would have looked more pleasant and up-to-date.

Better known for being suppressed by Disney to protect their 1951 production, this co-French/British production is surprisingly successful at capturing Carroll's logical nonsense. A prologue with author Dodson/Carroll, Alice and her sisters, and a visit by Queen Victoria (splendidly played by Pamela Brown) sets up amusing "clues," a la the Kansas scenes in THE WIZARD OF OZ.

The main story is told with a live Alice moving through painted sets and wonderful pixilated puppets. There's real eccentric charm and fun in many of the sequences, the fish-footmen are particularly funny with a Gilbert & Sullivan style number to match. Sadly, the "Ansco" color has apparently gone to rack and ruin, but the intentions can at least still be seen. Still, it comes closer to an acceptable Carroll then most adaptations.

This version of 'Alice in Wonderland' (a co-production between the UK and France) suffered from being released around the same time as the Disney cartoon with little advertising; and through being suppressed from release in the UK due to the portrayal of Queen Victoria in the early pre-fantasy scenes.

It was also filmed in Ansocolor, a process which has not travelled well if the print in the archives is anything to go by. Carol Marsh is an OK Alice, but looks older than she should be - the puppets are mainly hideous and would be frightening to children (especially the Mock Turtle, the Duchess, and the Mouse Alice encounters in the lake of tears). I did like the footmen-fish however and the combination of live action with puppet work, if a bit creaky, does have charm.

At the start of the film, we meet the dons of Oxford and the Queen (the Vice-Chancellor then becomes the White Rabbit, the Queen is the Queen of Hearts, with the same actors providing the voices). The switch into the 'Wonderland' story proper comes with a boat trip in which the stuttering Dodgson entertains the Liddel girls to compensate from them missing the visit of the Queen to Oxford.

There is much to enjoy in this film - the score is good, if a little saccharine, the puppets are memorable (although one or two, especially the Caterpillar, compare unfavourably with their Disney counterparts), and the story still has charm. There is also enough humour to entertain adult audiences while the main story enthrals their children. Recommended, if hard to track down these days.