By Neil Hogan
In this essay I will discuss the connection between the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865) and Jan Svankmajer’s movie Alice (1988), (also known as ‘Something from Alice’) and how Svankmajer’s treatment adapts and expands on the original text, with a focus on the themes of a girl empowered, the power of sound, the nightmare of learning, and show that there are really two movies in one.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story of a seven-year-old girl who follows a rabbit down a hole into another world. In Svankmajer’s Alice, the movie follows this storyline, and opens with a bored and upset child throwing rocks into a river. The small child, the type of dress she is wearing, and her action of looking at her sister’s book, would all be recognisable, fulfilling the expectations of people who had read Lewis Carroll’s story. Assumed knowledge would confirm for most viewers that the woman next to her is Alice’s sister. The rock throwing, though, is not part of the original story, and neither is the slap on her hand that the woman gives Alice, so this adaptation would also alert viewers that they will encounter something different.
During the title sequence, Alice says “You must… close your eyes. Or… You won’t see a thing.” (English subtitles). Alice is in control, and is directing not only her adventure, but the viewers’ as well. If she doesn’t close her eyes, she’ll never see her dream. It also gives the viewer the foreknowledge that this is a strong-willed girl in control, and they should expect a powerful figure will lead them through the movie. This subverts the original Alice character which allowed things to happen to her rather than take control.
The title sequence then fades into Alice’s bedroom, full of jars, travel souvenirs, toys, dolls, and other things. The viewer is being given pieces of a puzzle and would want to work out what is really happening, making the movie more interactive. Soon Alice sees the rabbit, which viewers expect. But Svankmajer has subverted this as well by making the rabbit a stuffed one in a box that comes alive, rather than one that Alice sees in a garden. The stop-motion taxidermy rabbit escapes its glass case and hops up a hill to a desk with a drawer. When Alice quickly follows, and puts her hands into the drawer, she is pricked by a drawing compass, drawing blood. Emphasising her lack of fear, she simply pulls out the compass and dives into the desk drawer, full of wooden set squares and other items of education, in her pursuit of the rabbit.
This sequence reveals another theme, loud foley sounds with no background music. Diegetic and nondiegetic sounds, such as the plops of rocks in a teacup, a ticking watch held by the stop-motion taxidermy rabbit, and a clock in the background of the bedroom, are clear and distinct.
The viewer would quickly understand then that Alice’s comment in the titles had a third meaning. If viewers close their eyes, they will find another movie of sound, one which they can fill with their own imagination. This shows that the movie has broken through one of the limitations of the book in that we cannot hear the many objects when reading. But the movie is still limited in that we cannot know exactly what Alice is thinking, unlike the book.
The desk that Alice climbs into in Alice represents another theme, that of the nightmare of schooling. When Alice crawls then walks across more set squares, rulers and notebooks along a tunnel, and makes her way past the rabbit eating sawdust, she falls into a lift shaft and is slowly lowered past display pieces that look like they belong in a museum. The dark shadows and low lighting, pastel and grey shades, claustrophobic clutter, and skulls with eyeballs, adds a more eerie and disturbing quality to her slow fall – perhaps a metaphor for Alice’s and many other children’s feeling that going to school is like a descent into hell. This opening sequence ends with Alice falling through the lift floor onto a pile of leaves.
The original text’s opening, apart from the leading poem, is four small pages long and takes approximately four minutes to read. Svankmajer’s movie adaptation expands on this, converting the opening sequence into fifteen minutes of vision and audio. This gives viewers a widened field of interpretation of the text with more intense imagery, and a different way to enjoy it.
In conclusion, in the opening of Svankmajer’s Alice viewers are treated to a reimagined adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that has both similarities and differences to the original text, with a stronger emphasis on sound, giving viewers a movie within a movie, as well as the theme of education, reminding children of how much they hate learning. We also see a much stronger Alice then the original text, and through her strength, and the puzzles she explores, we are more likely to interact with the movie and develop a further appreciation for the character and the story as a result.
References:
Alice. 1988. [film] Directed by J. Svankmajer. Czechoslovakia: Channel Four Films.
Carroll, L. and Tenniel, J., 2016. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Sweden: Wisehouse Classics.
By Neil Hogan S3769455
Course Code: COMM2637.
858 words. 3 pages including references.
In this essay I will discuss the connection between the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865) and Jan Svankmajer’s movie Alice (1988), (also known as ‘Something from Alice’) and how Svankmajer’s treatment adapts and expands on the original text, with a focus on the themes of a girl empowered, the power of sound, the nightmare of learning, and show that there are really two movies in one.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story of a seven-year-old girl who follows a rabbit down a hole into another world. In Svankmajer’s Alice, the movie follows this storyline, and opens with a bored and upset child throwing rocks into a river. The small child, the type of dress she is wearing, and her action of looking at her sister’s book, would all be recognisable, fulfilling the expectations of people who had read Lewis Carroll’s story. Assumed knowledge would confirm for most viewers that the woman next to her is Alice’s sister. The rock throwing, though, is not part of the original story, and neither is the slap on her hand that the woman gives Alice, so this adaptation would also alert viewers that they will encounter something different.
During the title sequence, Alice says “You must… close your eyes. Or… You won’t see a thing.” (English subtitles). Alice is in control, and is directing not only her adventure, but the viewers’ as well. If she doesn’t close her eyes, she’ll never see her dream. It also gives the viewer the foreknowledge that this is a strong-willed girl in control, and they should expect a powerful figure will lead them through the movie. This subverts the original Alice character which allowed things to happen to her rather than take control.
The title sequence then fades into Alice’s bedroom, full of jars, travel souvenirs, toys, dolls, and other things. The viewer is being given pieces of a puzzle and would want to work out what is really happening, making the movie more interactive. Soon Alice sees the rabbit, which viewers expect. But Svankmajer has subverted this as well by making the rabbit a stuffed one in a box that comes alive, rather than one that Alice sees in a garden. The stop-motion taxidermy rabbit escapes its glass case and hops up a hill to a desk with a drawer. When Alice quickly follows, and puts her hands into the drawer, she is pricked by a drawing compass, drawing blood. Emphasising her lack of fear, she simply pulls out the compass and dives into the desk drawer, full of wooden set squares and other items of education, in her pursuit of the rabbit.
This sequence reveals another theme, loud foley sounds with no background music. Diegetic and nondiegetic sounds, such as the plops of rocks in a teacup, a ticking watch held by the stop-motion taxidermy rabbit, and a clock in the background of the bedroom, are clear and distinct.
The viewer would quickly understand then that Alice’s comment in the titles had a third meaning. If viewers close their eyes, they will find another movie of sound, one which they can fill with their own imagination. This shows that the movie has broken through one of the limitations of the book in that we cannot hear the many objects when reading. But the movie is still limited in that we cannot know exactly what Alice is thinking, unlike the book.
The desk that Alice climbs into in Alice represents another theme, that of the nightmare of schooling. When Alice crawls then walks across more set squares, rulers and notebooks along a tunnel, and makes her way past the rabbit eating sawdust, she falls into a lift shaft and is slowly lowered past display pieces that look like they belong in a museum. The dark shadows and low lighting, pastel and grey shades, claustrophobic clutter, and skulls with eyeballs, adds a more eerie and disturbing quality to her slow fall – perhaps a metaphor for Alice’s and many other children’s feeling that going to school is like a descent into hell. This opening sequence ends with Alice falling through the lift floor onto a pile of leaves.
The original text’s opening, apart from the leading poem, is four small pages long and takes approximately four minutes to read. Svankmajer’s movie adaptation expands on this, converting the opening sequence into fifteen minutes of vision and audio. This gives viewers a widened field of interpretation of the text with more intense imagery, and a different way to enjoy it.
In conclusion, in the opening of Svankmajer’s Alice viewers are treated to a reimagined adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that has both similarities and differences to the original text, with a stronger emphasis on sound, giving viewers a movie within a movie, as well as the theme of education, reminding children of how much they hate learning. We also see a much stronger Alice then the original text, and through her strength, and the puzzles she explores, we are more likely to interact with the movie and develop a further appreciation for the character and the story as a result.
References:
Alice. 1988. [film] Directed by J. Svankmajer. Czechoslovakia: Channel Four Films.
Carroll, L. and Tenniel, J., 2016. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Sweden: Wisehouse Classics.