Alice in Wonderland (1949)
Overview
This exceptional theatrical version of Lewis Carroll's 1865 classic features a combination of live characters and puppets.
Cast
Pamela Brown
The Queen of Hearts (voice)
Felix Aylmer
Dr. Liddel / The Cheshire Cat (voice)
Joyce Grenfell
Ugly Duchess / Dormouse
Carol Marsh
Alice
Raymond Bussières
The Tailor / The Mad Hatter (voice)
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CinemaSerf
I think this is the closest thing to a "trip" I've ever experienced on film - at times it's a positively surreal interpretation of Lewis Carroll's nonsense story of "Alice" (Carol Marsh) and her adventures having fallen down the rabbit hole. Unlike the colourful, but much fluffier Disney adaptation that followed in 1951, this is a more sophisticated, clever and intricate hybrid of real life characters married with some basic, but engaging, stop-motion animation as she encounters the "Mad Hatter"; "Cheshire Cat"; 'Ugly Duchess" and, of course, the brutally minded "Queen of Hearts" (voiced here excellently by Pamela Brown). I'm not really a fan of the story, and sadly although an undoubtedly creatively accomplished effort from Dallas Bower and Irving Block, this doesn't really do much to sustain my interest. The pace is suitably frenetic, but Marsh is pretty flat in the title role, and the innovative effects of the production start to war thin quickly leaving us with little better than a semi-animated farce of a film. If you enjoyed the wackiness of Carroll's original book, then you may well get more from this than I did, but I'm afraid it was all just too silly for me, sorry.
