The last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot

[sovay]

Discovery that will improve some day of mine as soon as I can afford it: Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland (1966) is finally out on DVD in a region I can watch. One of the extras is Dennis Potter's Wednesday Play Alice (1965), essentially his first version of Dreamchild (1985). My thanks go out to Tim Burton for providing the timely excuse: I had just been planning to pine for the BFI's Alice series. Now if only someone would get around to releasing a real DVD of Dreamchild.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's interesting and curious that Alice in Wonderland has such a history in film. Why is it? Is it just that the dreamlike scenarios that Lewis Carroll created lend themselves to film, or is there something more to it than that, I wonder.

From the way my kids described the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland (which they didn't like very much), I think I'd hate it. The BFI's Alice--at least the clips available on YouTube, is very cool.

[sovay]

Is it just that the dreamlike scenarios that Lewis Carroll created lend themselves to film, or is there something more to it than that, I wonder.

I think it's partly the fact that beloved books tend to inspire adaptations—look at how many versions there are of A Christmas Carol, for example, or Pride and Prejudice—but I agree that there's something about the imagery that people keep returning to; the unpredictability, the satire that is pure silliness until you grow up to it (and then it's no less silly, it's just more significant), the atmosphere of logical nonsense that the reader (like Alice) can never quite work out ahead of the characters. There's a lot there, and I think everyone wants their own chance to work with it. Filmmakers as well as writers as well as artists as well as . . .