AVAILABILITY
This production is available on both
DVD and
VHS from AMAZON.COM for online purchase. Click the picture below to go to their website where you can obtain more information or place an order.
These releases are for the USA and Canada but will play elsewhere as long as you have a VCR which can play the American NTSC format. The DVD is listed as "all regions", so should be suitable for anywhere. The DVD has a additional bonus short film: Darkness Light Darkness.
There is a straight PAL version of "Alice" available for the UK on VHS from www.videoshop.co.uk
|
|
 Jan Svankmajer is a Czechoslavakian artist who is well-known in his native country for his surrealistic art and his avante-garde films. Neco z Alenky, or 'Alice' to the English-speaking world, isn't his first stab at interpreting the work of Lewis Carroll, having previously adapted "Jabberwocky" in a 1971 short film. His version of 'Alice' uses many of the familiar Carrollian plot devices, but often these are jumping-off points and he allows his imagination free rein to develop and expand a particular situation in a new and interesting way.
Many of the characters are reconstructed as nightmarish abstracts of the way they have usually been depicted in previous adaptions. This can make for disturbing viewing and you do need to step aside from conventional views of 'Alice' to fully appreciate the nonstop swirl of oddball sights and sounds.
|
The settings are equally disturbing. Alice wanders through endless tatty rooms filled with an astonishing variety of bric-a-brac, display cases and just plain rubbish. Animal remains seem to be everywhere, usually either stuffed or skeletal. Often the settings seem to be vague memories of other people's houses, where attics and store cupboards are stuffed with just-recognisable items and kept for no good reason other than "they might come in useful one day". The film is also noteable for it's use of symbolism. The rabbit's scissors, for example, are heavily signposted right from the beginning and then, at the end of the film, perhaps provide a hint as to what might happen after we've gone. There's also the puzzle of the kitchen table which appears all the way through. Whenever the rabbit wants the drawer open, he claps his paws and it opens. When Alice tries to do the same, it doesn't, and she has to try to pull it open instead. Everytime, the drawer sticks, the knob comes away and she falls backwards. What this all means, I'm not sure. Maybe it's symbolic of something, or perhaps it's just a grim running gag!
|
Kristyna Kohoutova makes an excellent job of the title role, all the more so when you remember that she would be working without actually seeing the animated creatures around her. She obviously responds well to the director, producing all the movements and reactions of puzzlement, apprehension, fear and rebellion, purely on verbal cues.  The fact that it comes together so well indicates clarity of vision and a high degree of control on the part of the director and film editor. Alice's English voiceover is provided by Camilla Power.
The film is well worth viewing, as long as you are able to cast aside any preconceptions of what Alice "should" be. It's now available on DVD which, as a bonus, includes an 8-minute short film from 1989, "Darkness-Light-Darkness," a brilliant (and pessimistic) metaphor on existence featuring some outstanding claymation work from Jan Svankmajer.
If nothing else, Neco z Alenky has explained where all my odd socks keep disappearing to!
|
|
Alice went on to express a consternation we might all share: "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't know exactly what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate..."
A wardrobe opens to reveal the Prague radio tower. In voice-over, a young girl reads Lewis Carroll's nonsense verse on the Jabberwock. In pixillated live action, the wardrobe dances through the trees. Its doors open into a 'Victorian' nursery, filled with dolls, toys and games. A bearded, bespectacled man peers down from a photographic portrait as the objects begin to come to life.