A WORLD OF WONDERS IN ONE GREAT PICTURE.
Alice, a bored English girl, longs for adventure… and gets it on the day when she follows a rabbit in a waistcoat down a hole in the ground. A story that Disney originally considered making as a live-action film. When the animated version premiered, critics were not thrilled, but it remains a lovingly Disneyfied interpretation of Lewis Carroll, with sparkling imagination; Alice gets more than she asked for as she deals with larger-than-life characters like the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the tyrannical Queen of Hearts. Intense and fun, the film often resembles one long fever dream.
1951-U.S. Animated. 75 min. Color. Produced by Walt Disney. Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske. Novels: Lewis Carroll (”Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, ”Through the Looking-Glass”). Music: Oliver Wallace. Songs: Bob Hilliard, Sammy Fain. Voices of Kathryn Beaumont (Alice), Ed Wynn (Mad Hatter), Jerry Colonna (March Hare), Richard Haydn, Sterling Holloway, Verna Felton.
Trivia: Remade as a live-action version, Alice in Wonderland (2010).
Last word: “Some people told us that because the ‘Alice’ books are pure fantasy the basic laws of story progression need not apply. We answered that when you look at a moving picture you do not have a chance to ponder over the meaning, or to re-read. We believe that our picture, which runs 75 minutes and has thirty-five of the eighty or so original characters, animated singly, or in groups, or with Alice, will prove we were right in evolving a plot that unified essentially quite disparate episodes.” (Disney, “Films in Review”)