Commentary &Daily post 07 Jul 2009 07:23 am
Alice apoplexy
- The internet has been overrun with images from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, now in production. Lots of Victorian inspired, detailed photos of stars dressed like characters from the film. I’ve pulled a few of them and am posting them here.
Alice has been a problem project which so many studios, artists and filmmakers have attempted to tackle. None have been very successful. The 1933 Norman McLeod version was one of the first and one of the better versions. Edward Everett Horton, Sterling Holloway and Richard Arlen give Charlotte Henry enormous support in this interesting albeit very stagey version.
Disney’s animated feature is probably one of the best known of the films. It’s good in its own rite, but hardly captures the imagination of the Lewis Carroll book or the Tenniel illustrations.
Lou Bunin‘s version is very studied and lacking in much of the drama and whimsy of the story. As a matter of fact, that’s the problem with most of the versions. The story is somewhat like Candide in that it is picaresque in its adventures and becomes hard to dramatize. Burton’s an accomplished filmmaker, but his recent films have begun to look alike. Sweeney Todd doesn’t have the depth that it might have. A lot went into trying to captures Sondheim’s brilliant score, but that came at the expense of the story, itself, which became too much of a surface event.
Regardless, the pictures have had their effect in that it’s made me curious to see what he’ll do with the book.
Here’s a short commentary by Wolcott Gibbs I found in the July 16, 1938 issue of The New Yorker magazine:
We are one Walt Disney’s warmest admirers, but we can’t approve of his notion of making an animated cartoon out of “Alice in Wonderland,” Mr. Disney says that if he ever does make the picture, he proposes to follow the Tenniel illustrations, at least in spirit.
We don’t think this is going to work. Tenniel drew with a fine line, in enormous detail; the movies call for simple, conventionalized figures. The result would be that; Alice would look like Snow White (and probably talk like an elocution school) and a lot of nice, middle-aged people would get apoplexy.
Even harder than reconciling the styles of drawing, we think, would be the problem of adjusting Lewis Carroll’s humor to an audience of a hundred million people, many of whom consider Joe E. Brown the nation’s foremost comic. We don’t like to think of the things that would have to be done to make Alice a box-office success. We don’t want to see the Frog-Footman swallow a cake of soap and hiccough bubbles, or to hear “Jabberwocky” set to swing.
As a matter of fact, we never want to see Alice move or talk at all, and we don’t really believe that Mr. Disney, a modest man, wants to make her, either.
on 07 Jul 2009 at 9:56 am 1.Ricardo Cantoral said …
That’s an interesting comment on Sweeny Todd. I never felt it lacked depth, as far as musical films go. I felt the tradgedy of the characters quite well.
on 07 Jul 2009 at 10:17 am 2.Emmett Goodman said …
Mr. Sporn, have you read the synopsis of Burton’s ALICE? It almost sounds like Alice In Wonderland meets MEMENTO. It sounds like a new story based on Lewis Carrol’s work, except in this case his story is a memory rather than the present tense of the plot.
As far as Burton’s films go, Sweeney Todd was a totally new territory for Burton. Yes, there are certain things that have repeated themselves in Burton’s recent films, the most bothersome being that they are all adaptations as opposed to working from an original story like Beetlejuice or Edward Scissorhands. Still, Burton’s still covering a lot of new ground.
on 07 Jul 2009 at 10:41 am 3.Jeff Defalque said …
I caught Jan Svankmajer’s version, “Alice,” back in ’89. Truly inspired and unique take on the subject.
on 07 Jul 2009 at 3:49 pm 4.Esteban Alfaro said …
Is difficult to imagine another film version of “Alice…” after Svankmajer’s.
on 07 Jul 2009 at 4:42 pm 5.Ray K. said …
The Woloctt Gibbs quote is a riot–and, of course, prescient.
on 07 Jul 2009 at 9:35 pm 6.willy hartland said …
Every time a filmmaker adapts “Alice” to film, it always has the stamp of that
particular visionary. Wether it’s Disney, Svankmajer, Bunin and now Tim Burton. The best “Alice” will always be the one that lives in the reader’s imagination.
on 08 Jul 2009 at 1:11 am 7.Grant said …
The Burton version of Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” is one of the laziest, most inept filmed musicals I’ve ever seen (along with another Sondheim musical-to-film, “A Little Night Music.” It’s miscast, poorly designed and shot, misdirected, and devoid of emotion, suspense, or wit. The only good thing about the film is that it leaves the door wide open for the ultimate version to be made in the next generation.
on 08 Jul 2009 at 3:54 am 8.Mac said …
I think Sweeney Todd is one of Tim Burton’s best films; up there with Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. Although I have never seen any other production of the story, I did feel like the story I saw there came across pretty clearly. I also appreciated Burton’s take on the visuals and casting choices.
on 08 Jul 2009 at 12:15 pm 9.Tom Minton said …
Norman Z. McLeod had been an animator in silent cartoons, and may or may not have animated that running horse under the titles of “Horsefeathers”, which he also directed. It’s hard to believe the 1933 Paramount “Alice” is what could be called a studio film. But even that one, which was not afraid to go dark, didn’t completely capture Lewis Carroll. I’m off to the Getty to look at some of his photographs.
on 08 Jul 2009 at 12:31 pm 10.Tim Drage said …
The 1998 (UK) Channel 4 version of Through The Looking Glass, mostly shot on location on the Isle of Man, was surprisingly good.
on 08 Jul 2009 at 4:41 pm 11.Ricardo Cantoral said …
Though I never watched the broadway play of Sweeny Todd , I really can’t see many negatives at all. Like Mac said, it was one of Burton’s greatest films. The sets were postively stunning in my opinion, classic Tim Burton bleak but not as over the top as he usually goes. The preformances I enjoyed tremendously. Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman were all in top form for this movie. I can’t possibly contemplate the word mis-cast for any of these three fine actors. Like I said, I didn’t see the play but Burton’s Sweeny Todd was alot of fun.
on 08 Jul 2009 at 5:31 pm 12.Elliot Cowan said …
I think most of these character pictures from Burton’s Alice look horrible.
on 09 Jul 2009 at 8:09 am 13.Michael said …
Burton seems to be headed in a completely Victorian direction. Of course, this is seen not only through 21st Century eyes, but Tim Burton’s eccentric vision as well. Stills don’t make or break a film; the movie will speak for itself. If he comes anywhere near as successful as Edward Scissorhands, I’ll be ecstatic.