Who'd have thought falling down a rabbit hole would be such a good career move? Since Charles Dodgson (as Lewis Carroll) wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, the book has been staged, filmed, parodied and mined for its phrases. Tim Burton's forthcoming 3-D romp is just the latest to tackle its dream logic.
Already on DVD we have seen a dance version by the Prague Chamber Ballet, an awful 1985 TV movie with songs by Steve Allen, a 1999 Hallmark version with Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat, a 1983 production with Richard Burton and Nathan Lane, and, out next week, Sesame Street's Abby in Wonderland, starring the Count as the Counterpillar. In Alice, a 2009 miniseries expected on April 13, Alice is 21 and Wonderland is (to quote the bumph) an "underground city of twisted towers and parapets."
Actor-director Jonathan Miller, having talked the BBC into financing a 1966 version of Alice in Wonderland, consciously set about removing the fun from the tale. In his commentary on the DVD, coming out next Tuesday, he says he wanted to capture "the strange melancholy of the Victorian child" and to get rid of "the japing fun and games which people have always introduced into the productions."
He chose his Alice, 13-year-old Anne-Marie Mallik, because of her "melancholy solemnity." Her dialogue is heard most often in voiceover because children were meant to be seen but not heard, and because in a dream "you hear yourself speaking but don't necessarily open your mouth to do so." She rarely looks at those talking to her. She doesn't fall down a rabbit hole because the idea "seemed to me to be rather boring."
Miller set his Wonderland in chapels, gardens and Sir John Soane'sMuseum in London. He asked Ravi Shankar to compose the music because the sitar recalled the droning of insects on a hot summer day. He filmed in black and white to capture the look of mid-1800s daguerreotypes and early photographs; it's an impressive effect.
Actors such as Michael Redgrave (the Caterpillar), Peter Cook (the Mad Hatter) and John Gielgud (the Mock Turtle) were easy to work with, Miller says, but Peter Sellers (the King of Hearts) was constantly in "a state of superstitious gloom" because of his horoscopes.
Miller typed snatches from Carroll's work every morning and handed them to the actors. He allowed improvisations only if they seemed Carrollian, like this bit by John Bird as the Frog Footman, which sounds like a Ricky Gervais routine: "I'll tell you what I'll do for you. Nothing. How's that? Any good to you? At all? Nothing? I mean, I won't be able to do it straight away."
Among the bonus features is a real find: Alice (1965), a 70-minute TV film written by Dennis Potter about Dodgson and Alice Liddell, for whom Dodgson wrote the book.
Whereas Miller chose not to put his characters in animal costumes because it would have been absurd to hide the stars' faces, the 1933 film Alice in Wonderland , also out next Tuesday, had no such qualms with its galaxy of Paramount Pictures stars. Cary Grant is hidden behind the Mock Turtle's mask. W.C. Fields is invisible within Humpty Dumpty. Gary Cooper is unrecognizable behind his Don Quixote makeup as the White Knight. In this stately production, which also borrows from Through the Looking Glass, Alice doesn't fall down the rabbit hole until 15 minutes into the movie. But she does look at the other characters, so that's something.