Alice in Wonderland (1966)

This is probably the oddest yet most faithful version of Lewis Carols Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland I’ve seen to date. I can’t say it’s my favorite version, but it does beat the pants off of any recent effort to portray the nonsense of the children’s classic. While most versions try to portray Wonderland as a place of whimsy and fantasy, forcing the poor actors to don animal heads or the main human actors to talk to CGI rabbits, Jonathan Miller focuses on the melancholy and underlining brutality of the original. Although this movie may not be for everybody, it does have a lot to offer for Lewis Carol lovers like myself and others who enjoy a well-shot art film.

Most of you, I’m sure, are at least familiar in passing to the plot of Alice in Wonderland. A bored girl follows a rabbit down a rabbit hole and finds herself in a topsy turvy world where the logic of the Victorian world is played out in a ridiculous fashion. She meets the denizens of this world in a series of encounters that culminates in her confronting the Queen of Hearts. She is then forcefully evicted from this world and finds herself back in normality. Whereas most films try to tack on a plot onto this nonsense, Miller can be credited to keeping faithful to the original text and leaving it unsullied by plot. In fact, there is no real script for this film at all. All of it, except for one or two ad-libbed lines, is taken directly from the book.

The cinematography in this film is fantastic. The film is shot in beautiful black and white that, according to the director, was meant to mirror the photography work of the late nineteenth century. Watching this film really is a visual treat. It side steps the usual Tenniel route and goes for a more Victorian era look, with humans in period costume rather than humans in animal costumes wearing period costume. Most of the supporting cast does a fantastic job at bringing Carols work to life. Leo McKern plays a wonderfully brutal Duchess, Wilfrid Brambell plays a mincing White Rabbit superbly and Peter Sellers plays a passable King of Hearts. Perhaps my favorite has to be John Gielgud playing the Mock Turtle. But where it falls apart is in the portrayal of Alice by Anne-Marie Mallik. Although perhaps we shouldn’t expect much from girls named Anne-Marie. I can see where the director was going in casting this girl as a far more melancholic Alice. But in this actresses hands the performance falls a little flat.

In many ways this is an exceptional film. The cinematography is fantastic and the set pieces are wonderful. Especially considering they were producing this on a shoe string budget. This film isn’t for everyone and I would reconsider showing this to your children. Not because there is anything objectionable in the material, but they will be flat out bored. But if you’re an adult and like Alice in Wonderland, you will find many things to love about this film. The special features on the DVD are very interesting as well, especially a retrospective look at a silent film version of Alice in Wonderland.