Alice in Wonderland (1933)

In 1933, Paramount put together this all-star adaptation of the Lewis Carroll children's classic – it's one of those odd attempts at Hollywood art movie (if not as extreme as Warners' A Midsummer Night's Dream) which give prominent folks a chance to hide under make-up and do much-loved texts, and comes from a very interesting troika of creators, with director Norman Z. MacLeod (best known for his early Marx Brothers films, which certainly verge often on Carrollian nonsense logic) working from a script co-written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (later the acid wit of All About Eve) and William Cameron Menzies (primarily an art director, with directing credits that range from Things to Come to The Maze).

The opening is drawn from Alice Through the Looking Glass, with a Tenniel-look Alice (Charlotte Henry) bored at being kept inside by snow (no 'golden afternoon' here) and nagged about her runaway imagination by a governess (Ethel Griffies of The WereWolf of London) then climbing up on the mantelpiece to peer into the room beyond the looking glass and passing into the reverse-world, whereupon the plot shifts to the Wonderland business and a parade of Paramount stars whose fame has been lasting (Cary Grant, W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper) or was fleeting (Baby LeRoy, Louise Fazenda, Richard Arlen) show up as Carroll characters (very faithfully recreating the illustrations), often completely masked and unrecognisable (that's Grant's voice as the Mock Turtle, but is he really inside the suit?).

The 1930s were rich in prissy, fussy character actors, and there are a few real casting coups – Edward Everett Horton as the Mad Hatter, Edna May Oliver as the Red Queen, Fields as Humpty Dumpty. It experiments with effects techniques (Menzies' side of things?) and has an unusual, interesting take on the size-changing scene. There's even a spot of animation from Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising to illustrate 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'. Like too many Hollywood takes on classic fantasy (even the 1939 Wizard of Oz), it crashes to Earth at the finale as Alice wakes up in her armchair and realises her whole adventure was just a dream.

First published in this form here.

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