Alice in Wonderland

When people hear the name Alice in Wonderland, they either think of the 1865 novel by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (using the pseudonym Lewis Carroll), or the 1951 animated Disney film despite the various adaptations throughout the years. This would makes sense as many nowadays view it as easily one of the company’s most charming, entertaining and even ‘’wonderful’’ early films, but you’d be surprised to find out that the movie was actually considered a disappointment back in the day, getting unfavorable reviews and only becoming popular after a re-release in 1974 which led to subsequent merchandising, a strong home-video releases and switch in the critical perspective since its original release. So what didn’t work about this film for people at the time of its creation and why does it still hold up so well after all these years? In a park in London, the film follows a young girl named Alice (voiced by Kathryn Beaumont) who grows tired and uninterested in her typical early fancy European lifestyle, and dreams of having her own world where nothing is ordinary. She’s shocked when she discovers a talking white rabbit with a pocket watch and waistcoat (voiced by Bill Thompson) and decides to chase after him, leading her into the magical and offbeat world of Wonderland. Now in a brand-new world of delight and uncertain fear, Alice travels through Wonderland to try and find that white rabbit while coming across a bunch of completely insane characters, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum (voiced by J. Pat O’Malley) a talking caterpillar (voiced by Richard Haydn), a mystical teleporting Cheshire Cat (voiced by Sterling Holloway) a unbirthday party hosted by the Mad Hatter and the March Hare (voiced by Ed Wynn and Jerry Coloona) and the murderous ruler of Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts (voiced by Verna Felton) and her husband, the King of Hearts (voiced by Dink Trout). Despite getting what she asked for in regards to a world of her own, it quickly becomes too much for her and she tries to find her way back to reality, but in this place where the abnormal is right and everything must be crazy, is that even possible? Considering the book’s confusing narrative and lack of story structure, it doesn’t seem like something that would be easy to interpret into a film, which is true as it took a lot of time and several rewrites before the film even came out. However, it’s those exact factors, as well as great characters, animation, actors, and pacing, that makes Alice in Wonderland a great crazy treat for people of all ages to watch and experience.

Everything about the film is, not surprisingly, completely insane, mad and non-nonsensical, but the film relishes on that and does it in a productive way. You’d figure with a narrative that by all accounts isn’t structured in a manner that would work with a three-act structure, it’d wouldn’t really work as a film, but the directors for this film, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, know what they’re doing, and are aware of how get the best out of this material and let it function as a clear narrative without losing its oddball nature. It decides to play it like a road trip movie, casually going from one strange oddity to the other, giving enough time for each segment to leave an impact with memorable lines and characters, and making sure that each moment never overstaying its welcome and keeps the film’s pacing decisive (with the film only going for about 75 mins in length). The original stories by Lewis Carroll have brilliant writing that is very smart and arguably captured the message of the importance of uniqueness and the madness of trying to conform to a singular identity and mindset (pretty ahead of its time honestly). In this film, it is very easy to follow underneath its rambling nature, and the film portrays these lines very well through actors that convey such a unique dialect with great conviction and never feeling unconvincing, although from another perspective, it could come across as complete gibberish and not make any sense (and they wouldn’t even be that wrong). Not everyone is going to like the film’s oddly structured framework, as it doesn’t have any strong twists or turns and is not even heavy on lessons or plot, it’s just the experience and the chase. But the experience is so interesting and fun, the movie is much more based on the journey than one about plot points, this kind of format is honestly how Disney handled their animated shorts previously, so its not too out of the norm for them, and it’s just filled to the brim with charming oddities that it doesn’t bother most. The only real issue that the film has it that, despite being an loose adaptation of the original book, the film, not surprisingly due to its length, had to cut out a lot of stuff from the story. Though every scene in the film is from at least one of the Alice in Wonderland books, many scenes had to be removed during the scripting process for the film and those could have been interesting avenues to see in this film, but its ridiculous to complain about what could’ve been when the end results were still as strong as they were.

What keeps the confused narrative from being annoying outside of the great writing, is the memorable characters that come from this film, and all of them have such great moments throughout. The person that holds together the movie must be Alice, she’s the blank slate; the straight one to witness all the craziness, and its a role that is definitely needed to act as a somewhat focal point for the audience to interact through (as she was within the original story). What’s nice though is for a simple observer role, especially compared to the book version, the character is quite likeable and not boring to watch. Though not having much character in the book, she is given enough here to keep the audience invested and you’re really with her throughout her journey and want to see her get home once she comes to her own realization. It would’ve been very easy to make her too bland to offset the world around her, but she is still allowed to have a defined personality. She is kind, proper, and very much a logically-minded individual that has taken aspects of her time period and upbringing, but she’s also mischievous, curious, adventurous, and looks at the world in a very energized even child-like wonder. She tries to get into the fun insanity of everything but ultimately gets too frustrated, and her need to rationalize the situation bounces well off a world of madness where logic has no purpose. Most of this comes from the great writing, and the stand-out performance by Katheryn Beaumont, who makes this hard to read dialogue from the book very casual and believable, its a very well handled and well conceived character and, despite not being a mad character, she is easily one of the strongest elements of this film. When the straight one is enjoyable, its no surprise the mad ones are even more interesting and entertaining, as well as appropriately conveyed from the source material to the picture screen. The Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat, The Caterpillar, all of them are favorites of many and its easy to see why through how they are acted and written. All of them are so memorable and delightfully mad, and its always fun trying to judge whether you should trust them or not. They’re mostly friendly and always in their own mind, but their sporadic mood-swings always keeps that uncertainty of their true intentions in the audience’s mind, and it makes every moment in this film slightly on-edge in the best way possible. There’s a lot of great voice talent involved in this film, with Ed Wynn, Jerry Colonna, Richard Haydn, Sterling Holloway, J. Pat O’Malley, Bill Thompson, Joseph Kearns and Doris Llyod all doing really good jobs. The Queen of Hearts is a great early Disney villain and even in a large cast of memorable characters, is very entertaining and instantly memorable despite only showing up in the final part of the film. Any character that has great power, authority and puts on a fancy facade, to only reveal a terrifying aggressive side with the overreacting screaming attitude of a spoiled child is just great for comedy and as an appropriate threat in Wonderland. All of her scenes are great, she is very funny but is also given her moments to be pretty threatening in the context of the world, and Verna Felton is fantastic as the voice.

The animation has this great juxtaposition throughout that leaves a very memorable impression and gives the movie a very distinct identity. The movie was originally supposed to live-action and went through pitches and ideas, before Disney realized that to do justice to the book, it needed to be an fully-animated featured. You know its a project that is special to Disney when it contains each of the ”Nine Old Men” of Disney, who are considered the pioneers of the studio and are famed animators because of it (with their names being Marc Davis, Milt Kahl, Eric Larson, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Ward Kimball, John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman, and Les Clarke). Alice in Wonderland is prime for the animation space, and is done very well in this movie, but the way the film goes about handling is visuals is a bit different to how you’d expect it to. The characters all have great designs and bright noticeable colors that help them stand out more, but for the most part, the backgrounds are completely black, only adding to that slightly fearful atmosphere Wonderland exudes. For a version of Wonderland, its an interesting contrast from how Wonderland would usually be portrayed. But with that said, when color does fill the background and they use them properly, it’s very visually pleasing and quite impressive for something made in the 50s. The film does hide a grim darker aspect with the amount of people that get their heads chopped off, which again gives the film a creepier edge and if anything, this is actually toned down from one of the original ideas that was thrown about during production (one of the original endings involved Alive getting pretty close to a guillotine, that’s all the needs to be said). The songs are good and have memorable crazy lyrics and nice melodies (the flower song can very easily get stuck in your head for a long time) even though they don’t have as much inclusion in the movie as other Disney films do, and they do feel like songs from the time period (not in a dated sense, just a noticeable one).

The original story is a trailblazer that deserves to be recognized and praised. Being the story that helped end the era of didacticism in children’s literature and made it so that it should be first and foremost about delighting and entertaining them, it and its sequels have lasted the test of time for its writing, characters and story and unbelievable imagination that has undoubtedly left an impact on pop culture. This animated Disney film is a simple delight for all ages still to this day. Its creative and imaginative, it looks great and effectively uses the colors, the characters are memorable, it’s a wonderful journey movie, and its kept together by how likeable the main character is. If there are any problems with the movie, its that they could have used a lot more from the book and offered more great material, but that’s a good complaint in many regards. If the movie you want is one filled with twists and turns and character development, this clearly isn’t the movie for you, but just looking at the title will tell you that’s not the movie you’re going to get. Everyone else will receive a great deal of charm, a great deal of imagination, and of course, a great deal of madness that will keep anyone, young and old,  invested. One of the best versions, this movie, without any sarcasm, is truly wonderful.