After almost half a century, Lewis Carroll's, Alice in Wonderland, has had a bumpy road, when it comes to theatrical motion picture adaptations. Even the audiences from the classic era of film weren't too crazy with the costumes and special effects, that were being utilized in these films. They felt that this kind of a story could never be adapted well into a motion picture. Silent films had the toughest job telling this story, because a lot of the plot in Alice in Wonderland is driven by dialogue. The audiences needed sound. Then the sound versions came out and those versions didn't do well either, because audiences still weren't buying the story of Alice with the technical problems still being there. The best of the classic Alice films is Alice in Wonderland (1933) and the audiences of the day didn't go see it. So, next comes color film and how did Alice's story do with that?
This new version (for 1949), had color and was produced in France. Up to this point, the film adaptations were all American or British productions. Maybe the French could do a better job this time. What if, they went with something other than costumes for this one. With so much rejection coming from the audiences of the past, about the odd characters in Wonderland, never looking believable, the idea for this film was to use stop-motion photography, to make the characters more authentic to the source material. The French filmmakers than added in more music interludes to the film and created a prologue, which involves Alice having a dream about Wonderland. She is just dreaming of a story, that her friend, Lewis Carroll (Stephen Murray), is telling her. Yes, this is the first adaptation, that includes Wonderland author, Lewis Carroll as a character. This is another interesting change to this story.
In Alice's dream, she substitutes the characters in the live-action Oxford part of the film with the stop-motion characters in Wonderland. This film has the same problem, that Alice in Wonderland (1931), had, in which, the Alice actress was twenty years old, playing a character, that is supposed to be, barely ten years old. This film works better in that regard, because the costume, hair and make-up works better here, than the 1931 film did. As long as there aren't too many close-ups of her, to give it away, the full-packaged performance does work. I mean, really, that is what acting is all about I guess. Being able to execute a character, no matter what kind, is the whole point of acting. Anyway, the 1931 depiction of Alice was bad, but the age problem doesn't really effect the quality of this film.
The problem with this film comes from the special effects themselves. It isn't the stop-motion that is the problem, so much as the matting, choice of effects and the practical analogue effects, they had at their disposal, compared to the budget they had. This wasn't a huge Hollywood production, that utilized the best equipment on the market. It was an international picture, who's film industry didn't have as much cash as Hollywood, so the special effects used in this film, look more like effects from the 1930s. Again, the stop-motion effects used in Alice in Wonderland (1949), by pioneering, stop-motion artist, Lou Bunin, is fine in this movie. It is the other effects in the movie that are the problem. Stop-motion photography was huge in the late 1940s and 1950s. It was one of the more preferred means of doing creature effects in films of the time period. The legendary Ray Harryhausen was hitting his stride at this point and Willis O'Brien had just released Mighty Joe Young (1949). Stop-motion was king at this time. Lou Bunin does a nice job with Alice in Wonderland (1949), especially in the climactic scene with the Lobsters. It is a very good depiction of what that scene would look like, especially compared to the previous adaptations of this book. It made perfect sense to use stop-motion effects.
This film has its problems, mostly related to a grittiness, that doesn't translate well into a vision of being very polished. The story, editing and pace does jump around a little too much. The version of this film I saw was a poorly pixilated, VHS version of the American release. After I watched the American version, I found the French version, but unfortunately the French language version came without English subtitles, but was of a much higher quality. It must have come from a DVD quality print. So, I skipped through the French version and I saw what I was looking for. The higher quality version does improve the qualify of the overall film and the special effects. It helps show the excellent detail of the stop-motion characters that Lou Bunin used. The Lobsters look much better in their pivotal scene. So, try and find the highest quality you can out there, because this film may not be great, but it isn't terrible either. It is a fair effort towards, what has been a difficult story to tell in cinema. It needs 1951 to arrive.
5.4 (D- MyGrade) = 6 IMDB.
