Alice - by Jan Svankmajer

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Lenny's description:
1988. Svankmajer's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland mixes animation and live action to create a dreamlike world, but it is not simply a kid's film.

Alice watches a stuffed and mounted rabbit come to life in her playroom and follows it through a magical drawer into a strange world that resembles a 19th-century toy store come to life.

Svankmajer uses familiar objects in unfamiliar ways, giving a fantasy quality to the banal (and the not so banal) while tipping the dream logic to the edge of nightmare. The movie may have a somewhat disturbing effect on the viewer.

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Amazon.com essential video:
This adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland mixes animation and live action to create a dreamlike world, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's simply a kid's film. Young Alice (Kristyna Kohoutová, spoken by Camilla Power) watches a stuffed and mounted rabbit come to life in her playroom and follows it through a magical drawer into a strange world that resembles a 19th-century toy store come to life, with a few specimens from a natural history museum thrown in. Czech animator Jan Svankmajer retains the familiar story elements but tweaks them with bizarre imagery brought to herky-jerky life with his spasmodic style of stop-motion animation. The caterpillar becomes a sock puppet with dentures, while other crazy creatures materialize as creepy skull-headed beings that bleed sawdust. Throughout the tale Svankmajer returns to punctuating close-ups of Alice's lips telling the story, just to remind us that this is a tale told. In the best surrealist tradition Svankmajer uses familiar objects in unfamiliar ways, giving a fantasy quality to the banal (and the not so banal) while tipping the dream logic to the edge of nightmare. While the imagery remains more unsettling than genuinely disturbing, younger children will certainly be happier with Disney's brightly colored animated classic Alice in Wonderland. Older children and adults will better appreciate Svankmajer's sly visual wit and unusual animation style. --Sean Axmaker


Product details:

Item number (ASIN): 6305779635
Actor: Kristýna Kohoutová, Camilla Power
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Brand: Jan
Category: DVD
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Format: Animated, Color, DVD, Live, NTSC
ISBN: 6305779635
Languages: Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), English
Manufacturer: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Number Of Items: 1
Original Release Date: January 1, 1988
Package Dimensions: 60 x 540 x 750 (hundredths-inches)
Package Quantity: 1
Publisher: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Region Code: 1
Release Date: April 11, 2000
Running Time: 91, minutes
Theatrical Release Date: 1988

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Rating: - A wonderfully weird and bizzar interpetation of Alice in Wonderland
I'm picky about my foreign films. Mostly, I don't care much for reading subtitles for 2hrs, but this one intrigued me. Surprisingly, this film doesn't have subtitles, there is very little dialog and it is dubbed over in English. I think that the director was counting on most of the audience to already be familiar with Louis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland stories. I love the animation, and while it lacks the more "cleanly" animated films of present such as Corpse Bride and Coraline, it has a very distinct quality which is very much part of the charm this film has. It is certainly worth watching just for the visuals and the director really takes the absurdity that Louis Carroll intended in his stories to heart. It's wonderfully strange and occasionally a bit frightening just as Alice in Wonderland was intended. Not really a film or story for children, so don't confuse this with Disney's diluted version or the current Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. It stands on it's own as a very individual re-telling of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and if you are as big a fan of stop-motion animation as I am, you will enjoy it all the more.

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Rating: - The Best of All!!!
This film is the best adaptation of "Alice" and Lewis Carroll internal world. Svankmajer is a surrealist artist, he uses stop motion techniques and a lot of semiotic strategies to make his spectators think and interpret. Those who are rating with one or two stars: If you are not familiarized with this kind of artitic films, please go and watch Burton`s Alice. It is in color and with current special effects, a film created just for you!!!

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Rating: - Not what I remembered
I saw this twenty years ago while I was in college, remembering that I liked it. Maybe because my girlfriend was artsy and I was "in love". Picked this up again and I don't know what I was thinking. This movie is unwatchable now. I could only take the closeup of Alice's mouth saying "Said the white rabbit" so much. That is pretty much the whole dialogue of the movie. Stop animation I remembered does not hold up today. Enough about this, I'm going to watch the SyFy of Alice on blu-ray and can't wait for Tim Burton's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

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Rating: - Style Over Substance
"Neco z Alenky" (1988) (being marketing as "Alice") is a triumph of style and form over substance. Czech animator Jan Svankmajer manages an animation style and production design that will hold most viewer's attention during the first viewing of this revisionist version of "Alice in Wonderland". A good thing as screenwriter Jan Svankmajer is no Lewis Carroll and his storytelling technique is all visuals. His technique can leave nothing to the imagination because the production's paltry audio (minimal dialog and no score) keeps one's imagination in neutral for the entire 84 minute running length. "Alice" was the second of the four relatively recent efforts to "out-weird" Carroll by taking the framework of his story and constructing a feature film that reflects the director's inner child at the expense of the wit and wisdom of the source material. If a perverse homage is your cup of tea and you don't hold you own image of the Mad Hatter sacred, then you should check out this film along with the other three: Tim Burton's recent release, Terry Gilliam's "Tideland" (2005), and the one that started the trend-Richard Elfman's "Forbidden Zone (1982). Just don't use terms like brilliantly inventive and original because these things all go down a rather well-traveled path. Missing in all these, as it is in the more conventional treatments of Carroll's classic, is most of Carroll's wit and his main character's irritation with the rude and illogic she encounters in Wonderland. In "Alice" this stuff is replaced by macabre elements that mostly elicit a "lose your lunch" reaction. Svankmajer does a nice job directing his title character (played by Kristy'na Kohoutova'), she is not so much a proper Victorian girl as a knockoff of Pippi Longstocking with large eyes, good teeth, and a willful expression. The white rabbit has a much bigger part in the story than he did in the original. In this version he is a stuffed rabbit in a glass display case who pulls his feet free of the mounting nails, breaks the glass, and disappears into a nearby drawer. He spends the remainder of the film dodging Alice and leaking sawdust stuffing. Svankmajer goes symbolic throughout the film with doorknobs and drawer pulls. Alice is never able to just open a door or a drawer. Typically the knob comes off in her hand and she must devise a different way to gain access. Which sort of fits with the animator's instructions at the beginning of the film to close you eyes if you want to see something. But Svankmajer is more technician than storyteller so don't expect a lot of suspense and motivational elements. Most of the traditional Wonderland characters are here. Those like Bill the Lizard who had little to say in the original fare quite well. Those like the Mad Hatter whose charm was mostly in their witty banter come off pretty lame. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

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Rating: - Great Movie-short review
I loved this film. It has a real flavor for the original Alice in Wonderland Story (dark). The white rabbit has got to be the creepiest character,especially for what he is ( a real stuffed rabbit). This film has very little to no talking, and can seem long for those who are not in the mood for a two hour film. Also, what sets this movie apart from other Alice in Wonderland movies are two things: 1) there is no singing...thank god 2) most of the scenes focus on adventures indoors, not out, which gives this a refreshing flavor for an old classic story. Non of the animals or characters are goofy like in most Alice movies. The characters often feel dangerous and ones that the average person wants to avoid...just like how it was in the original story. Also, most of the characters are dead animals with big creepy glass eyeballs, which adds interest to the over all film. I love the unique feel that this move gives to an audience who wants a change from the traditional Disney style Alice in Wonderland films.

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