Adrift In Worlds of Wonder
Alice, Séraphine and Gere
by Robin Simmons
March 11, 2010
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Disney’s new “Alice in Wonderland” has received mixed critical response but it still broke box office records. The opening weekend generated over $200 million around the world! Tim Burton’s take on the strange characters and weird underworld of Lewis Carroll still has power to enthrall. Movies have had a long fascination with Carroll’s works. Why is it we are so fascinated with and can never get enough Alice?
In real life, Lewis Carroll was in fact the Reverend Charles Lutwige Dodgson, a brilliant, shy, stuttering, Oxford don who taught mathematics. He was also likely a celibate heterosexual pedophile with severe migraines that triggered the disturbing, hallucinatory images he illustrated and wrote about under his pen name. Dodgson/Carroll ostensibly did this for his muse -- little girlfriend Alice Pleasance Liddell (1852-1934). The hand-tinted photo that Dodgson/Carroll took of Alice posed as a begger child.
When the Reverend Dodgson first met little Alice, she was four and he was 24. See the disturbing photo below that Dodgson/Carroll allegedly posed and took when Liddell was about seven.
The Reverend Dodgson had a collection of photos of languidly posed nude little girls that he photographed and lovingly hand-tinted.
Liddell died in near poverty in 1934 after years of eking out a living making personal appearances and lecturing on her experiences as the real Alice. Dodgson/Carrol died in 1898.
Whatever the somewhat creepy origins of “Alice in Wonderland” in 1865 and its 1871 sequel “Through the Looking Glass,” the stories resonated across all classes of English and American society and continue to entice today. A reality that deserves both a Freudian and Jungian analysis since no one seems to have a clear, consensus understanding of just what these bizarre tales are really about.
However, since the beginning of movies, “Alice in Wonderland” has been a source of inspiration for film adaptations. A quick internet search reveals over 100 movie titles spawned by characters and the world in Carroll’s Wonderland.
The first big screen iteration of Alice was an eight minute version directed by Cecil Hepworth in 1903. Cecil also played the Frog Footman. May Clark was quite enchanting as Alice.
Not to be outdone, in 1910, the fiercely competitive Edison Company released a longer (by two minutes) version of Alice in Wonderland.
In 1915, a feature length silent version appeared directed by W. W. Young and starred the lovely Viola Savoy.
In 1923, Walt Disney’s fledgling animation studio released a cartoon short based on Alice in Wonderland. Four year-old Virginia Davis is Alice. In the film, the live action Davis as Alice visits an animation studio and sees cartoon scenes. That night, the cartoon scenes come to life in her dreams.
A 21 year old Walt Disney (see photo) directed and starred in “Alice’s Wonderland,” the first of Disney’s Alice Comedies, a series of cartoons in which a live-action Alice and an animated cat named Julius -- who looks a lot like competitor Fleischer’s Felix the Cat -- have adventures in a clever animated landscape. At the time, this mix of live action and animation was as wondrous as Avatar’s computer generated 3-D world.
The first sound version of Alice was released in 1931. Bud Pollard directed and Ruth Gilbert played Alice. It was an elaborate production with unusual attention to detail.
The big Christmas release of 1933 was a version of Alice with major stars of the day. W. C. Fields was Humpty Dumpty, Cary Grant was the Mock Turtle and Gary Cooper was the White Rabbit.
Disney’s rival the cartoon legend Max Fleischer created an animated segment featuring the Walrus and the Carpenter. (The entire film has been posted on YouTube.)
Saucy Betty Boop sashayed through the looking glass in 1934’s Betty in Blunderland. The story has Betty falling asleep while working on a White Rabbit jigsaw puzzle. She awakens just in time to follow the rabbit into Wonderland. It’s NOT a dream!
The most well-known Alice is of course Disney’s 1951 feature-length cartoon. Seemingly benign and family-friendly, there are never-the-less disturbing elements that remain intact.
Disney, like Huxley and Jung, apparently had a fascination with the occult and the drug-induced doorways that lead to parallel worlds. These themes are embedded in the films he produced.
My favorite “Alice” is Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer’s surreal universe of fears and nightmares. A mix of live-action and stop-motion, the film remains true to Carroll’s absurd story but jolts with bold, disturbing images that almost defy description. Alice must traverse an astonishing landscape in her dangerous adventure that leads to a trial.
A major western theological theme is that life is a test and then we are tried and judged. Is that the theme the Reverend Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll was processing in his own life? Was he plagued with a secret guilt? Was he fighting a demon Jabberwocky on his own back?
SÉRAPHINE
Martin Provost’s beautifully realized account of the strange and wondrous life of French naive artist Séraphine de Senlis who, while living at a monastery, claimed to be visited by her guardian angel who told her to paint. She obeyed the vision, left the nunnery and took a job as a servant and cleaning lady and secretly spent her meager earnings on art supplies – some of which she made herself. An art collector and critic who stayed for a time where she worked, discovered her unusually vivid, other-worldly paintings and bought several pieces.
Her paintings brought her some fame and means, but the vision and inspiration evaporated and she spent her final days in an asylum. Yolande Moreau is memorable as Séraphine. From Music box films. (2008, Not rated, French with English subtitles, Widescreen, 121 minutes)
DAYS OF HEAVEN (Blu-ray)
Terrence Malick’s simple narrative film about a Chicago steel worker who accidentally kills his boss and flees to the Texas panhandle following the wheat harvest is perhaps the most beautiful of all feature films. Set in 1910, Richard Gere is the fleeing steel worker. Running with him is his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) and his kid sister Linda Manz). They trio find work in the vast wheat fields of a rich farmer and a love triangle develops. Biblical in it’s themes, the images evoke the story on a level rarely experienced in American films. Much more than the plot, this film is about the mystical, sometimes transcendent, landscape we must all traverse.
In many ways, amidst all the turmoil, pain and trials, heaven is all around us. And it has never been more richly rendered than in this perfect film now in a wondrous Blu-ray edition. If you are reluctant to upgrade your video library to true hi-def, this title is an exception you may wish to consider. From Criterion. (1978, PG, Widescreen, 94 minutes)
****
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