Alice in Wonderland (1966)

Fans of Lewis Carroll's classic novel for children will be fascinated by this startling 1966 interpretation by Jonathan Miller, a noted British theater director. Influenced by surrealism and Victorian architecture, Miller's black-and-white version of Wonderland is a dour and creepy place, not the frenetic and charming bustle usually depicted. A brunette Alice (Anne-Marie Mallik) wanders like a sleepwalker, rarely looking anyone in the eye, and has fractured conversations with the likes of the Mad Hatter (Peter Cook, Bedazzled), the Caterpillar (Sir Michael Redgrave, The Lady Vanishes), the Duchess (Leo McKern, Rumpole of the Bailey), and the Mock Turtle (Sir John Gielgud, Brideshead Revisited, Arthur). The result is probably an accurate picture of the adult world seen through a child's eyes--an unsettling and intriguing vision. Also featuring Peter Sellers as the King of Hearts and music by Ravi Shankar. --Bret Fetzer Amazon.com

Pretty true to the story, however strangely uncatching

Obviously it's not Disney's adventures of Alice in wonderland... but I wasn't looking for it. It follows the original written story pretty well, however being that there aren't any costumes and the acting is very strangely dislocated from the characters it just feels creepy in an almost look away sort of feel.

It's not that the acting is bad, but no one looks at anything in particular. They look off to the side as they speak to each other (with nearly no emotion mind you) and it is just strange.

It's also apparent that the movie was prodding at social issues of the time, however I have no idea what those issues are/were so it all goes over my head untouched.

An interesting look at Alice in Wonderland, however for an even stranger adaptation stop-motion version (however a bit more distant from the original) look for Alice

I liked the movie, it was interesting, just lacked the fun I was hoping for in such a weird fairytale that I was not pulled in. April 27, 2008

I Hate to Have to Say this, but...

... I found this version of Alice almost unwatchable. Previous reviews well capture this version's character, including its truly fatal flaws. Please read them. But I think they are by-and-large far too charitable. I love Carroll's works, so do not take this negative review as a knock on the Alice books; it is purely about this dismal and moribund adaptation.

Note, I write "adaptation." This is not a faithful version of Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," nor was meant to be. Fair enough. But wherever there was any mirth or joy in Carroll's book (which is itself slightly dark), producer/director Miller has replaced it with a cringe-worthy combination of sleep-inducing sonambulism on Alice's part, and obscure and pretentious dated social commentary on the part of other characters. It simply doesn't work in America in 2007, and I doubt it worked even in England in 1966.

There *are* bright spots, to be sure, as others have mentioned: Sir Michael Redgrave's Caterpillar, Peter Cook's Hatter, and--for me the best and only not-depressing part of the film--Sir John Gielgud's Mock Turtle. But these cannot make up for what is otherwise a perhaps noble effort, but simply no fun.

As jammer wrote, "The director never seems to get enough of having interminable full-face close-ups of [Alice], whose visage is devoid of expression or reaction and during which, little if anything else happens to advance the rest of the story. (Meanwhile all this precious screen time goes down the tubes when it could have been used so profitably elsewhere! Aarrgggghhhh!) Lewis Carroll, whose whole focus revolved around Alice, must surely have turned over in his grave."

Just so, and, as Alice says, "At any rate, I'll never go *there* again!"

(Note: my nearly three year old daughter is entirely in love with KCRW's radio/CD version of Alice [available for purchase only at kcrw.org, I think], and listens to it over and over. She is surely not the target audience of this disturbing version, but I thought she'd at least want to watch it *once*. She couldn't even make it through a single viewing. It's simply "too dark--too dark altogether.") April 11, 2007

A surreal BBC "Wednesday Play"

This is an experimental TV-movie from the BBC's "Wednesday Play" anthology. That series was always willing to risk trying something different, and this ambitious, low-budget "Alice" is certainly different. I wouldn't say I "enjoy" this film exactly, but...

I appreciate it as an experiment in what television could do. I admire the cast of iconic Britons who wouldn't normally coincide in the same project: Peter Sellers, John Gielgud, Leo McKern (in drag as the Duchess), Michael Redgrave, Peter Cook, Wilfrid Brambell, Alan Bennett, Malcolm Muggeridge, etc.

I also admire the creativity it took to imagine this quintessentially British tale accompanied by Ravi Shankar music.

Some viewers may find the film too creepy and surreal, but the original book is pretty disturbing to begin with. The film is fairly incoherent, but then so is the book: It follows the scattershot, ever-shifting logic of a dream.

The biggest problem (aside from pacing that now seems too leisurely) is that Miller's production assumes you already know what's going on. For instance, it assumes you know that the two men dressed as... um... men are actually the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle.

In other words, this is an "Alice" for people who are already overdosed on adaptations of "Alice," and who might appreciate a weirdly different take on the familiar story. Or to narrow that audience a bit, people age 12 and up who might appreciate a different take on the story. January 2, 2007

Jonathan's Wonderland

Wolfgang Petersen's superb personal take on Homeric myth and legend is entitled Troy, which makes it perfectly plain that he is not setting out to reproduce the Iliad. Miller's Alice in Wonderland could, more honestly, have similarly been given a different title, since those expecting to see Carroll's masterpiece will inevitably be baffled. This is not the original work of genius, but a critical commentary: it is about the book, but not the book itself. As such, it is still pretty interesting, and provides an interpretation, or an introduction (for those like Disney and others, who totally fail to appreciate the book's perfection) to what it is all about. Carroll's inspired work is an account of a child's encounter with the nasty and irrational adult world. Beginning with a birth trauma, the child is ejected into this unpleasant place, via its passage through amniotic fluid. It gives itself the prize of the thimble of life. Its staccato physical growth, both embryonic and post-birth, is accurately, if surrealistically, reflected --- the caterpillar is an ideal personification of metamorphosis --- as are its subsequent encounters with the enigmas of adult laws and regulations, the bullying, uglification and derision of mankind; the peremptoriness of authority, and its penchant for homiletic moralising. The book also probes the meanings of time and space, but not as deeply as its sequel, Looking-Glass. The final conclusion, in Carroll's original, is that human society is merely the structure of a house of cards, as any mature intelligence will recognize, sooner or later. Miller's take represents some of this, but omits much, which is why it seems to fall short, and is only partially satisfying. Something is missing, but it's valuable nonetheless. Four stars, not five.

Oct 26. Just watched it again, listening to Jonathan's commentary. Interesting remarks. I still think he over-emphasized the dream aspect, and the loss of childhood theme. It was very subjective of him to introduce Wordsworth. Also, he does tend to use the first pronoun somewhat excessively: it's still his Wonderland, not Alice's. The beginning and ending of the book --- the bottomless fall down the rabbit-hole, and the collapse of the house of cards --- are still crucial to its interpretation; and omitting these scenes, which are very memorable, is wrong. Having humans play the parts without pretending to be animals is, however, dead right. The improvisations of the two Peters, and the Bird insertion, are also irritating, however. Agree that the girl is perfect: it doesn't matter at all that she is eleven, not seven. She played the part very well, in what must have been a rather daunting set-up for her. The story is disturbing, as Miller says, but it is not really as melancholy as he would like it to be. October 5, 2006

Suddenly, my favorite

This is the most complex movie rendering of Carroll's classic, and one of the stranger ones. It's a 1966 BBC production in black and white, and done on a shoestring budget. As a result, there's just about nothing in the way of special effects - and certainly no animal-shaped costumes for the dormouse, white rabbit, and all the others. Instead, the characters simply dress in a deliberately over-done Victorian style, probably put together by raiding the stock BBC costume closet.

But what characters! Peter Sellers (who played in other Alice movies as well) is the King of Hearts, Peter Cook is the Mad Hatter, Leo McKern is the Duchess(!), and that's just the start of this star-driven production. Ravi Shankar composed the music and performs much of it, giving an other-worldly sense that fits Carroll's dreamscape perfectly. It's a kind of dream continually on the edge of nightmare without ever quite crossing the line, the same feeling you get when watching "The Prisoner" TV series.

But Alice truly makes the story. Ann-Marie Mallik, in what may be her only acting role, was the perfect choice. She moves through the dream with all the reserve you'd expect of a browbeaten Victorian child, but with all the presence and a little insolence of a woman-child entering her teens. Although she's more observer than participant in most scenes, she conveys a quiet sense of being fully engaged in it all.

This isn't a disneyfied, silly production for children. Nor is it a surreal exaggeration like Jan Svankmajer's (which I also enjoyed). It's a serious and baffling work. In that sense, it's more true to Dodgson's original work than any other Alice I've seen. This one has my highest recommendation.

//wiredweird May 26, 2006

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