Alice in Wonderland

THE STORY & GENRE -- The Lewis Carroll classic, genre. Ruth Gilbert stars.

THE VERDICT -- It has guts, but no brains. Calling the Wizard of Oz! You should watch this only for curiosity interest.

FREE ONLINE -- Yes, commonly at 51 minutes, but sometimes 53 minutes, although IMDB says 55 minutes, and Wiki 58 minutes.

I had no idea this curio even existed--I found it while looking for the 1933 version. It's not bad for an independent production of its era. The performances and costumes are fair enough, on the level of a decent stage production for children, even if most of the actors don't address their dialogue to each other--they stare straight forward while speaking, as if reading their lines off cue cards. The sets reveal the limited budgetary means, which of course counts in a fantasy like this--Wonderland feels no more surreal or magical than any random assortment of recycled theatrical backdrops and props.

Things start shockingly with an original Irving Berlin song (the film was shot in New York, and must have exploited some Broadway ties), but that opening-credits tune is the first and last we hear. Tonally, it does have more of Carroll's tart absurdism than many subsequent screen interpretations. However, the pedestrian execution makes it less than persuasive as entertainment either for kids or for adults.

As others have said, this Alice looks too old, but otherwise she's perfectly all right. She went onto a long career mostly on stage (including several premiere Eugene O'Neill productions) and in early television. This movie doesn't really work, but as a whimsical misfire it's not really any worse than Paramount's big-budget, starry "Alice" a couple years later. And it's short enough to satisfy your curiosity without turning into a real slog. Yes, it's "stagy," but no more so than most movies that came out in 1931.

The first sound version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND exists in a shoddy copy, with fuzzy details, an echoing sound track, and performers who seem to be reciting their lines instead of performing them, even when they are not doing Lewis Carroll's butchering of popular children's songs of his era. The characters are made up for pantomime, as they typically were on stage and in the movies, but Bud Pollard's cast of unknown and forgotten performers aren't much fun. You can skip this one.

This film opens up with a catchy theme song, written by future Oscar winning composer, Irving Berlin. Then things start to fall apart from there. Alice looks about 30 years old, but after looking closer to the cast list, it turns out Ruth Gilbert (Alice), was actually 19 in this film. In the original novels, Alice is explained as between 7-8 years old. In the 1951 Disney classic, she looks about thirteen. I always assumed Alice would be an average of 10-15 years old in these films, from what I have seen in the 1951 classic. So when 19 year-old, Ruth Gilbert, looks 30, playing a 13 year old, that means, we are back to low-budgets, bad make-up and bad costumes. This is where the trouble begins with this film. Alice in Wonderland (1931), opens right up with Alice, already in Wonderland. There is no scene in the beginning of the film, explaining why she falls asleep. She is just there already.

This is the first talkie for the character of Alice. An interesting, early attempt at breaking the fourth wall, has Alice talking to the camera/audience, with a blithering speech, that makes no sense. The use of the camera is primitive, even for 1931. You can tell the crew was inexperienced with sound film. Sound film was in its fourth, full year of use in the film industry at this point. The B-Team, low-budget crew, hired for this film, allowed the camera sound noise to be heard in the background of the film. Alice's first shot at a sound film has most of her dialogue muffled by camera gears grinding in the background. The audio in this film is bad, even for 1931. The poor audio issue is very distracting and adds to the fact that this is a badly made movie. I was wondering why this film had such a low rating. Now I know.

The entire film production is low budget, looks amateurish and shows the inexperienced nature of the crew. The use of the camera is archaic at best. This is a film by a low-budget, independent film company, named Metropolitan Studios in New Jersey. The film did not do well at the box office and was panned back in 1931 too. Now comes the stage acting. The Cheshire Cat is a dude, in a bad costume, with bad make-up on, who keeps screwing up his lines. For being the moment when sound film was finally here, so the filmmakers could take advantage of all that new dialogue and all those new plot points, which were things they couldn't do in the silent era, they fumbled the ball badly, in Alice in Wonderland (1931).

This quickie version of the children's classic shot in New York doesn't actually compare that badly with the mess Paramount made of it a couple of years later, and achieves a fair degree of the book's wit and certainly its strangeness; which the cheap stylised sets if anything enhance. Director Bud Pollard does his best to embellish things with occasional optical and editing effects; although for most of the rest of the time his blocking of the action leaves something to be desired.

Against this ramshackle backdrop nineteen year-old Ruth Gilbert's good-humoured, gurgling-voiced Alice carries the film rather well; although looking nearly as bizarre to modern eyes as the rest of the cast in her obvious platinum-blonde wig and vampish Lily Munster makeup.