When you’re dealing with talking cats, drug-induced caterpillars and all sorts of other absurdities, one wouldn’t expect the final product to be straight forward. That said, Jonathan Miller’s 1966 version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a surreal experience that is both a beautiful and somewhat frustrating. And that’s saying something for a story that is rooted in the strange and absurd.
The story has wandering spirit Alice (played by an woefully unhappy-looking Anne-Marie Mallik in her only film) falling down a hole into a magical world of talking animals and ironic discourse. Only this time there’s no animals.
Miller’s take on the classic tale is certainly memorable. Meant for viewers already familiar with the story, Miller removes the animals and strange creatures that make the story so colorful and replaces them with humans. And that whole colorful thing? Well, it’s in black and white too.
My biggest beef about this incarnation isn’t that liberal freedoms were taken on the source material. The heart of the novel is still here. But there’s not much life to it. It’s a matter of Alice wandering from strange situation to strange situation. The dialogue is long and winded, going on and on. Fun is never a part of the equation. Perhaps this is a result of the Disney-fication I’ve experienced with the story. But I’m still not totally sold on that idea either. I’ve seen many different versions and I don’t fall back onto the one that I’ve grown up consuming film clips and sound bites over the years. In fact, my fondest memories of Alice are from a 1980s mini-series that I haven’t seen for about 20 years. For the sake of nostalgia and all the fondness of the past, I’ll leave it at that.
Miller’s route is entirely different. I’ll grant that this Alice in Wonderland has merit as a piece of art. The angles and shots are striking. They do succeed in capturing a grim tone filled with ideas. I find it’s the wrong canvas for it, though. As an exercise in playing with film, there’s certainly some bright spots in this grim adaptation. As a take on a classic tale, I’m just not so fond of it.
Alice in Wonderland DVD Review
BBC’s Alice in Wonderland is a surprisingly packed DVD with an assortment of features that not only looks at this production, but a historical perspective on other adaptations as well. The film is shown in its original full screen format. The picture is quite sharp given its age. Audio is in English Dolby Digital mono. Subtitles are also in English.
Director Jonathan Miller provides a great commentary that deconstructs his inspiration for the film, the making of the film and the film itself. He is very intelligent and interesting in his discussion. Alice is an odd piece that looks at Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for Alice in Wonderland, Alice Liddell. There’s also a silent version of Alice in Wonderland made in 1903 by Cecil Hepworth. It’s narrated by Simon Brown of the British Film Institute. He offers a lot of historical context, however it would have also been nice to have a version that doesn’t have the talking, perhaps with a soundtrack. Other features include a featurette on composer Ravi Shankar and a photo gallery.
Alice in Wonderland Gallery
Video Clip
