Top 15 Disney films I grew up with, #12

#12: Alice in Wonderland (1951)

We have now reached the territory of Disney films I still actually enjoy and do not shy away from re-watching. Even now that I’ve read Lewis Carroll’s original novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I’m still pretty satisfied with the Disney version, which pretty much left in all the bits I considered essential, and added in some stuff from the sequel Through the Looking Glass, like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. Disney’s nonsensicalness and ignoring of logic is often a point of criticism for me, but Alice is meant to be set in a world of absurdity, and Disney recreates that world brilliantly with superb colours and animation that would have been top-notch for a 50s movie. They just don’t make them like this anymore! (hint to Tim Burton)

What works very well in this movie is Alice herself. She is a very pleasant person, but not so nice as to be unrealistic – at times she does loose her patience, being a very logical person in an illogical world. I think she’s the most developed pre-90s Disney heroine, though she’s not up against very stiff competition (Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, for instance, spends half the film either a baby or asleep, and she has zero lines after waking up). The story is … well, there’s not much of a story, per se. It’s just Alice, after a nice little expository song as she wanders around with her kitten Dinah, falling down a rabbit hole and ending up in Wonderland. Here she tries to find a way home and is increasingly frustrated in the process, before accepting that the world is not actually real and waking up from the dream. I guess she must have dreamt the whole impromptu song with her cat as well, because she ends up in the very tree she began in, with her sister (it’s her sister in the book, at least) reading a boring history lesson.

It’s a simple enough narrative, driven completely by Alice’s resolute character and the crazy world around her. The best kind of story, in my opinion. I have little else to say. The Caucus Race. Great. The Walrus and the Carpenter. Great. The Mad Tea Party. Great. The Queen of Hearts. Great! Great! Great! But what really made this movie for me was Alice, beautifully voiced by Kathryn Beaumont, after whom the superb character design was modelled. Beaumont also voiced Wendy in Peter Pan, which came out the following year. This movie is actually pretty comparable to Peter Pan in that it’s based on a classic novel and is about the wonder of childhood imagination, but also the sad reality of having to let go of that imagination in order to grow up. It’s almost the same as Peter Pan, really, just with less action, less characters and more psychedelic artwork.

(image source: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qskaSRkns8A/S4zTcJDLDWI/AAAAAAAAMGg/iZuCpRjTZPk/s400/alice-disney-tea-party+(7).jpg)