Film and TV productions across the years

HOME PAGE

PAGE ONE

PAGE TWO

PAGE THREE

PAGE FOUR

FILM MENU

Film (Czechoslavakia) made in 1988 Scripted, designed & directed by Jan Svankmajer Alice played by Kristyna Kohoutova English dialogue by Camilla Power

his unusual film was made by Jan Svankmajer and combines live action with puppet animation. The original dialogue is in Czechoslavakian but is dubbed into English by Camilla Power who effectively plays all the parts.    Svankmajer adheres pretty much to the Lewis Carroll story but, be warned, the treatment and imagery is quite disturbing, and isn't really for smaller children. Hey, it scares me in parts!    It starts traditionally enough, with Alice "sitting on the riverbank and having nothing to do", but, be warned, madness isn't very far away. Alice is amusing herself by throwing stones into the water from a pile of them she's gathered in her lap.    She finally throws the last one and, looking for something else to do, flicks at the pages of a book held by her sister, and gets her hand slapped. In the first of many dialogues directed at the audience, she tells us "we shall now see a film".

Alice is now sitting on the floor of a strange room which is cluttered with all kinds of domestic objects, junk and dolls. She sees a glass cabinet containing a stuffed white rabbit, which comes to life and pulls at the pins holding it's feet to the floor. Once free, he puts on a red uniform, takes a pair of scissors and uses them to smash his way out of the cabinet. The Rabbit takes out his watch and checks the time. Rather gruesomely, he keeps the watch tucked into a cavity in his chest from which sawdust is continually escaping. The Rabbit sees Alice and runs off across an adjoining field, in the middle of which is a table. The Rabbit opens the drawer and climbs inside, pulling it shut behind him. Alice follows him and opens the drawer, but there's no sign of the Rabbit. She pushes into the drawer which sucks her into it. She finds herself in a cellar, falls backwards into a dustbin and drops through a hole in the bottom into a lift which then starts moving down a deep shaft.

She passes lots of glass cabinets containing everything from kitchen utensils to more stuffed animals and fossilised bones. The lift comes to a sudden stop and Alice falls through a hole in the floor but lands safely on top of a heap of dry leaves covering a table. Alice steps back as all the leaves magically flow into the table drawer and disappear. She opens the drawer to look, and finds a tiny key; it fits a door too small for her to go through, but beyond she can see a painted garden with the Rabbit rushing around it. Alice finds a bottle of ink in the drawer, consumes it and shrinks to the size of a doll, but has left the key on the table. A cake falls from the drawer, and when she eats it she again becomes too big to escape from the room. She weeps, and finds herself swimming in her pool of tears.    In typically bizarre fashion, Alice meets a swimming mouse in a sailor suit, which promptly climbs on top of her head. It opens a hamper, and proceeds to have a picnic, hammering sticks into her head to support his cooking pot. This is going too far, and she shakes the mouse back into the water who swims off in a huff.

previous page

continued on the next page

next page