Alice in Wonderland (1915)

Originally posted to Facebook on 6/3/2016

Alice in Wonderland was the third film we’ve watched from 1915, and the second adaptation of Carroll's book. Unlike the films we’ve been watching recently, this one seems to fall outside of the canonical through-line that you might encounter when reading about the history of film. Neither the director (W.W. Young) nor the star (Viola Savoy) appear to have done anything significant in the movies before or after. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an unusual story as to how and why this film was made, but if so it was beyond my researching capabilities (i.e. ten minutes of googling.) It has little or no camera movement, and surprisingly few special effects, especially for a film as suited to them as an Alice adaptation. The main visual interest lies in the costumes, which are extensive and obviously modeled on the famous Tenniel illustrations. I felt particularly sorry for the actors in the lobster costumes who had to crawl out of the ocean, possibly over multiple takes. If we had watched this film as part of our chronology from a few years earlier -- 1910 or 1911, say -- it would have stood out as being fairly innovative, for its long-form story; and for its large quantity of scenes, sets, shots, and title cards; and of course for the costumes mentioned earlier. But after Cabiria, and Regeneration, and some of the other films we’ve seen recently, it instead strikes me as a little old-fashioned. I think that’s partially influenced by our choice of films, but I think it’s also a reflection of how much films changed between 1910 and 1915. It is a fairly short film, at under an hour, and there are occasional jumps in the plot that would lead me to believe that we were seeing a somewhat incomplete version. It does a pretty good job of coherently telling the story of Alice in Wonderland -- hewing very close to the book, to a fault sometimes. (For instance I don’t think there’s any reason to memorialize a joke from the book hinging on tortoise sounding a little like “taught us.”) We watched this shortly before watching the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland (and plan to see the sequel this weekend) and it was interesting to see all of the little parallels.

Next week we’ll watch our fourth and final film from 1915, ominously titled The Italian. When I informed the kids of the title Ben said, “I can’t wait to see how racist this one is.” I have some of the same trepidation, but it’s in the National Film registry, and the synopsis doesn’t sound too awful. I guess we’ll find out. The viewing list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT