13. Alice in Wonderland (1951)

After a disastrous return to full length narrative features with Cinderella, Disney continued with Alice in Wonderland, a movie that shares Cinderella’s light hearted nature, but is far more imaginative and wacky, though perhaps a little too much so. Opinion on Alice in Wonderland seems to have varied greatly throughout time – though today it is often considered to be one of Disney’s classics, as well as one of their most bizarre and humorous films, at the time it was criticised heavily for what many felt was a childish Americanisation of Lewis Carroll’s original novel. The Disney movie certainly is a little more goofy and light hearted, in comparison to the darker, subtly satirical original, but Alice in Wonderland has an oddball charm to it that I believe captures more of the original novel’s spirit than many gave it credit for, leading to a good, if not great, film.

Purely in terms of quality, the animation is unfortunately not that much better than Cinderella – some of the rougher edges have been smoothed out and there is certainly more detail, but there’s still something a little off, at least in comparison to Pinocchio, Fantasia or Bambi, which it simply doesn’t match. That said, from this point onward none of Disney’s narrative features really approach that level of animation for a very long time, so until I say otherwise, you may as well assume this is the case; that isn’t to say the animation in Alice in Wonderland is bad, it’s just a little disappointing that Disney kind of stagnated for so long and never really reached those early heights again until many years later, if at all. What Alice in Wonderland lacks in technical mastery however, it makes up in creativity – the animation here is much more energetic and imaginative than Cinderella and overall, is a welcome return to Disney’s more signature style, there is a lot of bouncy, energised movement to all the characters and things are always done in an interesting way. 

Perhaps the best example of this is the tea party scene, where instead of simply pouring tea in an ordinary way, the animators find dozens of creative and interesting ways for the Mad Hatter and March Hare to distribute tea, from breaking the teapot like an egg and having the tea fall out like a yolk to the March Hare using his ears like scissors to cut a stream of tea like a ribbon. This imagery is always very fun and it means that scenes rarely drag on or lose your attention, because there is always something to look at; even though this scene lasts quite a while and consists solely of people pouring and drinking tea, the animators came up with so many strange ways for the characters to do so that they always keep your interest. This is something that, for the most part, only animation can do; Disney knows how to use the greatest strengths of the medium to their advantage here, in comparison to the boring and completely unoriginal use of animation in Cinderella. Also much more creative is the general art style of this movie – from the backgrounds to the character design, everything is bright and colourful, weird, imaginative and fun to look at; this movie has a very strange and wild, though not overly surreal style that fits the ridiculous and bizarre setting of Wonderland perfectly. The art and animation in Alice in Wonderland are great fun and full of a lot more love, creativity and attention to detail than we’ve seen from Disney in quite some time.

It looks like Alice found the original blueprints for It’s a Small World or something

The story is one of the loosest we’ve seen yet, there really isn’t much of one at all, in so much as the film simply follows Alice searching throughout Wonderland for the White Rabbit, though to be honest, half the time even she seems to forget her goal, so even that isn’t exactly very important; thus, the film follows the familiar pattern of just a bunch of different situations for the main character to run into. Though not exactly the most engaging narrative, I think it works a lot better here than in some of the other examples such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Dumbo; though each scene seems pretty disconnected from the last, leaving the film feeling like a series of different shorts, this fits the setting of the film – Wonderland is a place that doesn’t make sense, where nothing seems to fit together and every person you meet is as colourful and larger than life as the last. It makes sense that Alice doesn’t really have much of a strong motivation, she’s just a curious young girl interested in taking in the world around her, her curiosity is piqued by the White Rabbit, who leads her into Wonderland, but once she gets there her interest wanders, because there are so many other strange things going on for her to look at. The fact that the film is a little aimless and sometimes forgets its direction fits perfectly with Alice’s character and the world she has found herself in, which is equally without order or direction. At the very centre of the film is the idea of absurdity, it reflects the daydreams of a child: meaningless, abstract and constantly jumping from one strange idea to the next; in this regard, the narrative structure of the film, ironically enough, makes complete sense.

What ties the film together and somewhat prevents it from simply being a series of odd, disconnected scenes is not so much a direct plot, but more of a character arc, in the form of Alice. The film follows Alice’s growth from excessively curious, imaginative and easily distracted, to more mature, serious and focused; this change is not rushed or intrusive, however and is a surprisingly subtle piece of character development. Alice changes rather slowly and realistically over the course of the film, at first she is enraptured by Wonderland, but as she has to deal more and more with its ridiculous rules, lack of any order and consistently unhelpful inhabitants, she slowly loses her patience and grows to appreciate the structure and logic of the real world she once found so dull. The film opens with Alice ignoring her seemingly stiff and serious sister’s lessons, as she simply wants to have fun and daydream about a more exciting and nonsensical world, only to be chastised by her sister for her childishness; by the end of the film, Alice must be the one to take on this role of maturity to deal with the childish inhabitants of Wonderland, who are more interested in having fun than any sense of order. Presumably, Alice gains a new level of appreciation for her sister and grows closer to her, but again, this is not made completely obvious or pushed on the audience in any way and is done quite subtly; Disney deals with Alice’s growing frustration with Wonderland and her gradual progression into a more mature character really quite well here.

Alice is such a fake geek girl I bet she’s never even played Panzer Dragoon Saga what a fucking poser

Part of the reason why this is done so well is the fact that scenes rarely focus around Alice’s actions and more on the supporting characters’ actions and how Alice reacts to them. The supporting cast is varied and colourful, each with interesting and unique designs and fun, if not so unique (Everyone is basically just slightly different levels of loud and crazy) personalities. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are bouncy and energetic, always moving around and interacting with one another in interesting ways, the Dodo is an enjoyably pompous and self-involved braggart who seems unable to pay attention to anyone else, the Cheshire Cat is a smug trickster who seems to have a sense of joy and self-awareness in the fact that he’s misleading Alice that the other characters don’t, the Queen of Hearts isn’t exactly a great villain and her constant screams of ‘OFF WITH THEIR HEAD’ can get a little grating, but her physical comedy and unusual relationship with the King are pretty funny. Best of all are the Caterpillar, who is so amusingly bored and disinterested with what Alice has to say and the Mad Hatter and March Hare, who have very big personalities and never stop moving, though they do get a little tiresome eventually. The only character I don’t really like is the White Rabbit who I just think is kind of lame, I guess he’s kind of like the only somewhat sensible character in Wonderland and plays straight man to the more ridiculous characters, but that role is kind of already filled by Alice so I don’t get why he’s there, he’s just dull. Individually, these characters are very fun, but altogether they are a little too much – every single one is so odd, larger than life and mostly over-the-top that you would get kind of worn out and pretty sick of them by the end of the movie if it was about them entirely.

It is here then, that the necessity of Alice and her downplayed character development becomes apparent – Walt Disney is famously said to have claimed that Alice had no ‘heart’; it is not entirely clear whether he was talking about the film in general, or the character of Alice in particular, but if he was talking about the character I have to disagree. I think Alice is full of heart and personality – even if it is a little understated – and is ultimately the very heart of the film itself, without Alice, the movie simply doesn’t work. If the film revolved entirely around the loud and insane characters of Wonderland, the audience would quickly get tired of their antics and the film would lose any sense of direction and go completely off the rails; the use of a character arc for the sensible, but still curious Alice gives the film a human element that prevents it from becoming too wild. Like Alice, we can be frustrated and confused by Wonderland’s seemingly contradictory and nonsensical rules, but at the same time, we find it fascinating and want to see more – Alice is a character we can relate to, someone who is just as confused, but just as interested as the rest of us, she serves as our guide through Wonderland and holds what would otherwise be a messy, completely disjointed film together. 

Goo goo g’joob

On top of that, I find Alice to be extremely likeable and fun to watch, like many previous Disney protagonists, her story and actions are mostly driven and progressed by other characters, rather than by herself. However, unlike Snow White, Cinderella, Dumbo or Pinocchio, who seem all too happy to let other characters make their decisions for them, Alice is ACTUALLY FRUSTRATED by the fact that the other characters seem to control her role in the story. Alice is headstrong and self-assured, she knows what she wants, simply to find the White Rabbit and eventually, leave Wonderland; however, she finds herself unable to find her way around due to Wonderland’s impossible and senseless geography and when she asks other characters for help, they seem determined to confuse her as much as possible before leading her the wrong way. Alice is the first Disney protagonist to not just let the other characters walk all over her and tell her what to do without resistance; that is not to say she is argumentative or confrontational, she is simply smart and confident enough to resist the will of other characters and ultimately, actively rail against them when she loses her patience with their ridiculous behaviour. This may not seem like much and really, seems like a pretty basic requirement for a protagonist, but when you really think about it, it’s pretty amazing how many protagonists in movies (Especially in Disney movies and kids’ movies in general) actually lack these traits and let the plot drive them, rather than the other way around. Alice is hardly the most focused or complex protagonist, but it’s refreshing to at least see a Disney hero that isn’t just a blank doormat. 

Though on the face Alice can appear a little bland or without “heart”, I think she has quite a lot of personality: she’s generally calm and easygoing, but knows when to be firm, she is polite and friendly, but can be witty and harsh when others push her patience, she’s intelligent and capable but – perhaps most refreshing – she ISN’T PERFECT. Unlike Snow White and Cinderella, who seem inhumanly kind, patient, trusting and amazing at everything, from cooking and cleaning to singing and dancing - not to mention their beauty - Alice, while still possessing many positive traits, actually has flaws. She tries to remain cordial with the other characters, but grows angry and irritable with them when they push her too far and even displays a sense of arrogance that comes back to bite her. Unlike her predecessors, she isn’t a great singer and is even snickered at in one scene for her inability to hit a high note. She is a little too much of a dreamer, meaning she doesn’t listen to her more sensible sister, gets herself into some difficult situations and makes reckless decisions, in spite of her own better judgement; in fact, at one point she actually acknowledges this and recognises that she should be more thoughtful and take her own advice instead of jumping headfirst into things. Though it’s easy to overlook, Alice is actually much more human and relatable than many Disney protagonists, strengthening her role as the human element that holds the film together and prevents it from becoming too crazy. There’s just something so charming about her, a great deal of this being owed to her voice actress Kathryn Beaumont, who does a fantastic job; she has such a sweet and soothing voice that suits Alice perfectly and captures all the facets of her character, I just find her so enjoyable to listen to, Alice is great.

What a rascal

The use of songs is a little different here, rather than a standard musical format, where characters engage in musical numbers, in Alice in Wonderland  it’s more like the characters sing brief little songs, many of which are based on poems written by Caroll for the original novel. On the one hand this works quite well, the songs are usually quite fun and are over pretty fast, so it’s like you just get a bunch of bursts of silly music. On the other hand, this means that you rarely get too into any of the songs because they’re not really around long enough to, though a few such as “The Unbirthday Song” and “The Caucus Race” are rather memorable. Some of the musical interpretations of Caroll’s poetry are a little off too, the Cheshire Cat’s musical form of “Jabberwocky” in particular is, in my opinion, an awful adaptation of the poem that doesn’t fit its tone or style at all – you don’t hear very much of it, but what you do is a laughably mismatched marriage of music and poetry that doesn’t capture any of the original poem’s magic. There are a couple of longer, more traditional songs, but they’re not that great either, just okay. The music can be rather fun and there’s a couple of memorable songs, but it’s a little disappointing on the whole.

‘Oh man, actually so faded right now, bro.’

Alice in Wonderland is a good time, nothing more or less; it’s good natured, silly and fun and that’s all it tries to be. The film doesn’t take itself too seriously and, like Wonderland itself, doesn’t confine itself to traditional rules or structure, jumping from scene to scene with exuberant energy. Unfortuantely, not all of these scenes hit the mark and the continuous character archetype of a wacky weirdo who misleads Alice gets a little tiresome by the end, some scenes are definitely a lot better than others and while the design of Wonderland is fun and unusual, they didn’t quite commit to making it as surreal as it could be – it is perhaps a little too light and fluffy, but this is Disney after all, not American McGee’s Alice. At the centre of the film is its greatest strength, Alice herself, an enjoyably fun, spirited and relatable protagonist who keeps the film from falling apart too badly; though many of the side characters do outstay their welcome a little and, like Alice, I found myself wanting to leave Wonderland by the end, she keeps things from becoming too annoying. Alice in Wonderland isn’t exactly a great film, but it’s still a fun time with a well realised hero who, despite what Mr. Disney might have believed, I think has a lot of heart. 

Other Thoughts

• This film might not be perfect but it’s a fucking masterpiece compared to Tim Burton’s version.

Where’s the tea gone why is the tea gone hahah get it you guys

6.5/10

Next Week: Peter Pan!

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds