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There are at least three great unfilmmable books in the literary world. From America, it is The Catcher in the Rye and from England it’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Lewis Carroll envisioned Wonderland as a dream, so translating it to film inherently makes it concrete. Also, his classics run on illogic and any attempt to film them gives them a form of logic. As a result, Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, a culmination of almost thirty years’ worth of work, isn’t any wackier than some of Disney’s Silly Symphonies. Disney had been toying with the classics since even before Mickey Mouse navigated his steamboat, in a series of silent shorts combining animation and live-action. Throughout the 30s, Disney was hatching the ultimate adaptation of a work he clearly admired. But he didn’t see that the work can’t be filmed since so much of it depends on what the individual reader brings in.
With that said, Disney did bring some admirable elements to his vision. Alice herself (voiced by Kathryn Beaumont) is one of the most appealing of Disney heroines, even though she looks much older than seven. In Wonderland, she gets on by virtue of her wits. In navigating through the place she relies on no one but herself. Unlike many of the early Disney heroines, Alice is intelligent and not defined by her relation to a man. She has more dialogue than Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White combined.
The best part of Alice in Wonderland is the entrance to Wonderland. Alice’s drift down the rabbit hole and attempt to get through the little door is the only sequence that captures the delightfully weird tone of the books. It perfectly captures the metaphors of being bigger, getting smaller, the feeling that no one will help you, and the frustrations about navigating through life.
In the book, the caucus race symbolizes the meaninglessness of life, which Carroll was applying to make a political statement. This was one of the book’s major themes, but it is lost in the next sequence of the film. The whole sequence is too jolly and is missing the dark tone that was integral to the book. Also missing the point is the story-within-a-story about the Walrus and the Carpenter narrated by Tweedledee and Tweedledum (J. Pat O’Malley). However, the meaning of the tale may be lost to many viewers today anyway. A general political statement can still be inferred, though. The gluttonous Walrus still reminds of conniving political charlatans and the sequence does still try to keep the dark tone of the book, but it plays more like a dark comedy and so matter-of-factly that it hardly serves its purpose.
What’s refreshing about Alice in Wonderland is to see Disney experimenting with an unconventional formula. Thanks to Alice in Wonderland, more irreverent movies began coming out of the Disney Factory. This tradition has continued with The Emperor’s New Groove, which also tells a wacky story involving a random transformation.
A sequence that does work is the “Golden Afternoon” number set in the garden of talking flowers. This was more of a studio invention as the flowers didn’t have such a prominent part in the book. Now, talking flowers are not the weirdest things Disney came up with. This is the studio that first brought color to cartoons with Flowers and Trees, after all. But it is a great scene full of quaint and distinctly English visual puns including crooning marigolds, bread and butter flies, and rocking-horseflies. As for the Caterpillar who lives nearby? Well, he is the sole reason that Alice in Wonderland would become such a popular stoner’s film in the 70s. Here, with his pointed slippers, he is an obvious caricature of an Eastern opium smoker. Grace Slick, however, would come to be inspired with the tale of the magic mushrooms.
Even more inspiring was the “Merry Un-Birthday” number with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare (voiced wonderfully by Ed Wynn and Jerry Colonna respectively). It has become something of an isolated classic thanks almost entirely to the song. And yet, it’s the characterizations that make it so amusing. It seems like the entire life of the two lunatics involves having wacky tea parties.
The Cheshire Cat is the most memorable character in the film, however, and also the most interesting. He grasps the workings of Wonderland and is sort of on the outside looking in. He is one of the few inhabitants of the strange land who is comfortable with himself, while everyone else fears the Queen of Hearts. The Cheshire Cat, however, freely admits that he is mad and even revels in his own madness.
But the Queen is terrifying in a truly totalitarian sense. There is a curious moment in the book when Alice realizes that the Queen’s army doesn’t scare her anymore because they are only “a pack of cards”. It’s as if she realizes that it’s her own dream and she has the power to make things stop. Therefore, the scene with the Queen should have been darker than what it is. Death as an undercurrent to life is a central theme of Wonderland and the movie handles this as a comedy. This light approach only works during Alice’s trial, which is in the great tradition of kangaroo courts in Disney films dating back to the short Pluto’s Judgment Day continuing all the way to the Court of Miracles discovery in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Such trials are orchestrated by the antagonist in a manner that cannot fail to convict the protagonist.
Disney made a mistake in adding the angle of Alice desiring to go home. In the book, apart from her occasional frustration, Alice simply observed Wonderland. She had the detachment common to the one we feel when we are dreaming. This solidifies the concretion of Wonderland in Disney’s movie. Cutting out some of Carroll’s best lines, Disney carelessly eliminated a dialogue in which the King essentially tells Alice that she is inside her own dream.
Still, considering the futility of attempting to do Lewis Carroll’s work justice on the screen, Disney succeeded surprisingly well with Alice in Wonderland. It may not win over Carroll scholars or literary purists, but its innovations are noticed.