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Alice in Wonderland (1951 film)

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Alice In Wonderland
File:AIWDVDSPECLEDTON.PNG
Alice In Wonderland (The Masterpiece Edition) DVD cover art
Directed byClyde Geronimi
Wilfred Jackson
Hamilton Luske
Written byWinston Hibler
Ted Sears
Bill Peet
Erdman Penner
Joe Rinaldi
Milt Banta
William Cottrell
Dick Kelsey
Joe Grant
Dick Huemer
Del Connell
Tom Oreb
John Walbridge
Produced byWalt Disney
StarringKathryn Beaumont
Ed Wynn
Richard Haydn
Sterling Holloway
Jerry Colonna
Verna Felton
J. Pat O'Malley
Bill Thompson
Heather Angel
Joseph Kearns
Larry Grey
Queenie Leonard
Dink Trout
Doris Lloyd
James MacDonald
The Mellomen
Don Barclay
Distributed byRKO Radio Pictures
Release dates
July 28, 1951
Running time
75 minutes
LanguageEnglish
Budget$3,000,000

Alice In Wonderland is the thirteenth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. It was produced by Walt Disney Productions and originally released to theaters on July 28, 1951 by RKO Radio Pictures. Lewis Carroll's surreal books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have been frequently adapted for film; this adaptation solved the problems of the setting by using animation. The screenplay was written by Aldous Huxley (uncredited [1]) among other writers, and the film uses the voices of Kathryn Beaumont as Alice and Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter. Still under the supervision of Walt Disney himself, this film and its animation are often regarded as some of the finest work in Disney studio history, despite the lackluster, even hostile, reviews it originally received, especially in the UK.

History

Production

Walt Disney had been interested in the novels and had tried adapting the first of the Alice books during the late 1930s and early 1940s, yet World War II caused the project to be shelved. After the war, Disney decided to take characters from both of the Alice novels and use them in the planned movie. Disney also thought of making Alice In Wonderland as a mix of live action and animation (as in Disney's early Alice shorts, which featured a live-action Alice in an animated setting, as well as the feature Song of the South), with Luana Patten as Alice, until this idea eventually grew into a fully animated musical. In fact, in the course of the production, some 30 to 40 songs (many of which with lyrics directly copied from Carroll's text) were thought up for the movie and then 2/3 of them were placed on the cutting room floor (including one that did eventually show up as part of Peter Pan). Oliver Wallace and Frank Churchill were called on to help with the compositions of some of the songs, but Walt still needed help with the creations of "novelty songs". So he called on the same Tin Pan Alley songwriters he had called on to compose and write the songs for Cinderella.

Release: Reactions and criticisms

Upon its release, the film was panned by critics and failed miserably at the box office. Disney later said he despised the film, claiming that, unlike Cinderella, Alice had a lack of "heart". Walt claimed that compared to the sympathetic Cinderella (whom most people felt for), most people didn't care about Alice. As a result, it was not reissued theatrically the way that other Disney films were. It was, however, the first Disney animated feature to be shown on television, as an episode of Disneyland, where it was severely edited to run within a running time of an hour.

Years after the film, many people wondered if the animators were "on something" when making the film. And for good reason; there are many things in the film (and even the books) that suggest drugs: Alice ingests potions, wafers, and mushrooms that alter her size or consciousness, not to mention the fact that her perspective changes constantly and she loses track of time, space, and even her own identity. And then there's the hookah-smoking caterpillar. In fact, the story might be seen as a hallucination. Naturally, it became the Disney studio's most requested 16mm film rental title for colleges, college towns, and private individuals across the country.

Re-release schedule, home video and beyond

The surreal elements in the film sparked a revival of the film in the psychedelic generation, which led to theatrical reissues in 1974 and 1981. The psychedelic association was furthered by synchronization enthusiasts who found simliarities in run time and themes between the film and the Pink Floyd album The Wall. The film was released on video in 1981 and 1986 (though it was mastered for tape in 1985), staying in general release ever since, with a 40th Anniversary video release in 1991 (this and the 1986 video release were in Disney's Classics Collection), and again in 1995 and 1999 (these two were in Disney's Masterpiece Collection.) It was released on DVD in Region 2 in 1999 and in Region 1 in 2000 (under the Gold Classic Collection DVD series), and on a fully restored two disc edition in 2004. A video game version of the film was released on Game Boy Color by Nintendo of America on October 4, 2000 in North America. Additionally, Disney's take on Wonderland also appeared as one of the first worlds in Disney and Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts.

Alice In Wonderland theatrical release history

File:Movie alice in wonderland flowers.jpg
Alice sings "All in the Golden Afternoon" with a garden of flowers in this scene from Walt Disney's 1951 animated feature Alice In Wonderland.

Titles in different languages

  • Chinese: 爱丽丝梦游仙境
  • Danish: Alice I Eventyrland
  • Dutch: Alice In Wonderland
  • Finnish: Liisa Ihmemaassa
  • French: Alice Au Pays des Merveilles
  • German: Alice Im Wunderland
  • Italian: Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie
  • Japanese: ふしぎの国のアリス (Fushigi No Kuni No Arisu; means Alice's Mysterious Land in English)
  • Korean: 이상한 나라의 앨리스
  • Norwegian: Alice I Eventyrland
  • Polish: Alicja W Krainie Czarów
  • Portuguese: Alice No País das Maravilhas
  • Spanish: Alicia En el País de las Maravillas
  • Swedish: Alice i Underlandet
  • Turkish: Alis Harikalar Diyarında

Trivia

  • Kathryn Beaumont, the voice of "Alice" in the film, also voices on the dark ride version at Disneyland.
  • This Disney animated feature was the first one in which the voice talent is credited on-screen with the characters they each play. This would not occur again until The Jungle Book.
  • In "The Walrus and the Carpenter" sequence, the "R" in the word "March" on the mother oyster's calendar flashes. This alludes to the old adage about only eating oysters in a month with an R in its name. That is because the months without an R are the summer months (May through August), when oysters would not keep due to the heat, in the days before refrigeration.
  • The fish watching the Walrus lure the oysters away look like the exact same fish (albeit recolored) that watch Pinocchio search for Monstro the whale in Pinocchio.
  • Carroll wrote the riddle "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" as mere nonsense; it has no answer. This has not stopped people, despite being repeatedly told that there is not, nor should there be, any answer, from trying to contrive one. Among the suggestions: "Because Poe wrote on both", "Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes" (the second of which is very similar to a solution that Carroll himself wearily suggested when he grew tired of people asking him about it). In its use in the film, it also could just be a sneaky joke that the March Hare and the Mad Hatter play on Alice. Alice hears the riddle, quietly repeats it to herself, and then asks it aloud back to the Mad Hatter when prompted. The Hatter and the Hare then immediately react as if she's saying something utterly crazy: "stark raving mad", as the Hare puts it (or, with Jerry Colonna's accent, "stark raven mad").

Voice cast

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