Alice in Wonderland

USA 1933
produced by
Louis S. Lighton, Emanuel Cohen (executive) for Paramount
directed by Norman Z. McLeod
starring Charlotte Henry, Richard Arlen, Roscoe Ates, William Austin, Gary Cooper, Leon Errol, Louise Fazenda, W.C. Fields, Alec B.Francis, Richard 'Skeets' Gallagher, Cary Grant, Lillian Harmer, Raymond Hatton, Sterling Holloway, Edward Everett Horton, Charles Ruggles, Jackie Searl, Jack Oakie, Roscoe Karns, Baby LeRoy, Mae Marsh, Polly Moran, Edna May Oliver, May Robson, Alison Skipworth, Ned Sparks, Ford Sterling
screenplay by Joseph L.Mankiewicz, William Cameron Menzies, based on the novel by Lewis Carroll, music by Dimitri Tiomkin, animation sequence by Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising

Alice in Wonderland

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Being forced to stay in one winter evening, little Alice (Charlotte Henry) wonders what the world would be like on the other side of the mirror - and thus she just passes through and meets all kinds of weird characters like the Caterpillar (Ned Sparks) Cheshire Cat (Richard Arlen), Tweedledum (Jack Oakie) and Tweedledee (Roscoe Karns), the White and the Red Queen (Louise Fazenda and Edna May Oliver, respectively), the Duchess (Alison Skipworth), the Mock Turtle (Cary Grant), Humpty Dumpty (W.C. Fields) and the White Knight (Gary Cooper) who just can't stay on his horse, has a tea party with the Mad Hatter (Edward Everett Horton), the March Hare (Charles Ruggles) and the Dormouse (Jackie Searl), and plays a round of crocket with the choleric Queen of Hearts (May Robson). It all ends in a mad banquet with talking food in which Alice is crowned queen and which culminates in chaos - before Alice wakes up safely back home, and everything was just a dream.

To blame an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland for being episodic would be slightly missing the point, because the source novel is pretty episodic as it is. The problem with this movie though is that it makes no attempt to really get its episodes into a narrative context, it is content with just recounting them as they are in the book. And while at least much of the novel's play on words is translated onto the screen here, it definitely lacks the book's sense of wonder, and the many bad costumes and cardboard sets sure enough don't help. On top of that, I fail to understand how one can hire quite as many stars like Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, W.C. Fields and others, and then hide them behind heavy makeup or even facial masks to make them utterly unrecognizable.

As much as I like Alice in Wonderland-movies in general, this is not one of the better adaptations.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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