Alice in Wonderland (1966)

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Movie
Original title Alice in Wonderland
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1966
length 72 minutes
Rod
Director Jonathan Miller
script Jonathan Miller
production Jonathan Miller
music Ravi Shankar
camera Dick Bush
cut Pam Bosworth
occupation

- as shown in the film credits
in the order of their appearance -

Alice in Wonderland is a TV movie of the BBC from 1966, based on the book Alice in Wonderland ( Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ) by Lewis Carroll based. Jonathan Miller not only directed but also wrote the script and acted as producer. Alice is played by Anne-Marie Mallik.

action

Alice goes on a trip into nature with her rather bitter sister. Both are coiffed and dressed in Victorian style. They have a book with them and sit on the grass to read while the sun beats down on them. Alice takes off her hat, sinks down and begins to dream. All of a sudden her sister has disappeared, instead a white rabbit is there. He is waving a cane to get attention. After it disappears back into its rabbit hole, Alice finds herself in a decrepit military hospital. When she entered one of the rooms, she saw through the window how people outside were enjoying the summer afternoon. When she reaches for a vessel that says "Drink Me" it suddenly becomes smaller, and when she then eats a mini cake that says "Eat Me" it grows back up again. Eventually she meets Mouse and Dodo and also other animals who compete in a hopeless race. Alice suddenly finds herself in a small hut, and while she feels it grow, animal noises can be heard in front of the hut, which deeply disturb her.

When Alice courageously steps out of the hut, she sees the white rabbit again and is shortly afterwards in another building, this time together with a caterpillar and a musty-smelling architectural model, whereupon Alice shrinks again and finally finds herself in front of a kitchen, in one of them Trial is being held. When Alice tries to enter, she is turned away by the frog-lackey, who tells her that there is nothing he can do for her. She replies that it is idiotic. Somehow she manages to enter the room and sees the Duchess singing a lullaby for her baby while the pepper cook smashes the dishes that have already been prepared. With a start, Alice notices that the baby the Duchess gave her is a pig.

When Alice moves on, she ends up at a tea party given by the hatter, the March hare and the dormouse. After she has left this party, she meets the gardener who paints white roses red for the queen of hearts. The King of Hearts is also there, and so is the Jack of Hearts; they have just come from a procession. After playing together, Alice is judged by the Queen of Hearts. You are threatened with beheading. After receiving a moral lesson from the chattering Duchess, the griffin takes her to the sea, where she sees Mock Turtle, the mocking turtle, who cannot finish her life story because she never set off. The turtle and the griffin perform a dance at the edge of the sea, while Alice finds herself at the court, where they are brought to justice. When she does not follow the instruction that she has to be quiet, as the passed out Queen of Hearts loudly demands her head, Alice wakes up from her dreams. She is lying in the tall grass and her gaze falls on her sister, whom she has completely forgotten.

background

Jonathan Miller's TV adaptation of the story of Lewis Carroll, filmed for the 100th anniversary of the debut novel, is both a logical implementation of the book and a radical departure from the usual conventions. Most interpretations of the material are ostensibly aimed at a child audience. In his film, however, Miller relies on adults as a target group on the one hand, and on those familiar with the novel on the other. This should ensure that they recognize the unusually implemented action. Therefore, the program was only broadcast by the BBC at 9 p.m.

Miller links influences from Carroll's environment, expressed through church songs and soundtracks, with contemporary fashion of the 1960s. The rest of the music is therefore characterized by Indian sounds, which corresponded to the zeitgeist and should represent an allusion to the British Empire .

The film and television historian Paul Mavis described the film adaptation as a "dark, nightmarish excursion into a senseless, almost indifferent madness". Cinematographer Dick Bush films in an unusual combination of a strict formal daguerreotype , aesthetically filtered through silent film framing, and also approaches the Gothic horror film of the 1960s (full of distortions, close-ups using fisheye lenses, etc.). The film adaptation does not correspond to what one expects from the literary model, no animal heads and costumes. It also said: "The effect shots in which Alice changes her size, came about through an extra wide lens and shortenings." Miller gives us a "completely different Alice ". The soundtrack “supports” all of this, it is “full of terrifying jerks and connotations”.

In this film adaptation, many prominent British actors were cast, for example Michael Redgrave as the caterpillar, John Gielgud as the turtle, Peter Sellers as the king of hearts, Peter Cook as the hatter and Alan Bennett as the mouse. The Briton Jonathan Miller directed. The title role was played by the only 13-year-old Anne-Marie Mallik, it remained her only known role.

Production and publication

The interiors were filmed at Netley Hospital (near Southampton ), a large Royal Victorian military hospital . The building from 1856 was almost completely demolished soon afterwards. The court scene was filmed at the BBC's Ealing Studios . Further recordings were made in Rousham House with its landscaped garden in Oxfordshire and in the county of Surrey in the south of England .

In Miller's production, most of the Wonderland characters are played by actors in normal Victorian clothing; the Cheshire Cat was a real cat. Miller said he wanted to try to show the gist of the story: “When you take the animal heads off, you begin to understand what it's all about. A small child, surrounded by worrying people rushing around, wondering if this is what adult life is like. "

Ravi Shankar wrote the music for the film, which first aired on December 28, 1966.

The black and white film was made as part of the British television series The Wednesday Play (1964 to 1970) and has been available on DVD since 2003 .

criticism

The film and television historian Paul Mavis summed up in his final thoughts on the film that the 1966 version was his favorite film of the Alice films. Producer, director and adapter Jonathan Miller created a "remarkably consistent aesthetic version" of Alice in Wonderland . [...] Not one segment is out of place here: cinematography, soundtrack, script, performance. Mavis recommended watching the film at night, when it was dark, rather than on a bright, sunny afternoon. He then appears "strange, unreal, eerie, on the other hand also in places comical, especially in the scenes with Peter Cook as a sneaky hatter and an absolutely brilliant John Bird as the talkative frog-lackey".

Scott Thill judged on brightlightsfilm.com Miller illustrated with Alice's long, strange journey into the world of adults the psychosis that the “Kafkaesque illogic of dreaming” carries within it, similar to “ David Lynch in Blue Velvet and Eraserhead , Jeunet and Caro in Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children or Jim Jarmusch in Dead Man ”. As soon as you get lost in Miller's “dense labyrinth of film language and the mixture of his images”, you “can't find your way back home”, wherever that may be.

The website of the Filmgalerie Berlin read: “Extraordinary implementation of the legendary book by Lewis Carroll. Made as part of a British TV series. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Brooke: Alice in Wonderland on screenonline.org.uk (English). Retrieved August 17, 2013.
  2. ↑ a b c Alice in Wonderland at dvdtalk.com (English). Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b Jonathan Miller Alice in Wonderland (1966) DVD info and review on brightlightsfilm.com (English). Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  4. ↑ a b Alice in Wonderland (1966) on filmgalerie-berlin.de. Retrieved August 17, 2013.