Alice in Wonderland **** (1951, Walt Disney) – Classic Movie Review 1413

Supervised by directors Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske and Wilfred Jackson, Walt Disney’s attractively designed Americanised 1951 animated feature film of Lewis Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass is charming enough but it has a slightly frosty air about it.

It certainly looks a treat with its beautiful, imaginative drawings in wonderful Technicolor, though British audiences may be put off by the American voices, the decision to update the story and the surprisingly non-winsome tone.

Though it’s not among Disney’s best or most popular work, there are some imaginative sequences with the Cheshire Cat and Queen of Hearts, and, American accents apart, most of the voices are spot on, notably Sterling Holloway’s Cheshire Cat, Verna Felton’s The Queen of Hearts, and Ed Wynn’s The Mad Hatter.

Kathryn Beaumont (who later voiced Wendy Darling in the 1953 Disney film Peter Pan) voices Alice, and Richard Haydn, Jerry Colonna, Bill Thompson, Pat O’Malley, Heather Angel, Joseph Kearns, Queenie Leonard and Doris Lloyd are also gainfully employed as voice artists.

Oliver Wallace was Oscar-nominated for his highly regarded musical score. The Unbirthday Song sung by The Mad Hatter, The March Hare and Alice and In a World of My Own sung by Alice are the best of the songs. The title song, composed by Sammy Fain, has become a jazz standard, first adopted by jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and featured on his 1957 album Dave Digs Disney.

It was met with great disapproval by fans of Lewis Carroll, as well as from British film and literary critics who accused Disney of Americanising a great work of English literature. The film had a lukewarm response at the box office, earning an estimated $2.4 million in 1951 and it was never re-released theatrically in Walt Disney’s lifetime. But time has been kind to Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, and, with its vintage, painstaking drawings, over the years it’s acquired the air of an old master.

The animation is by Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Frank Thomas, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman, Marc Davis, Les Clark and Norm Ferguson.

It is the 13th in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, released in New York City and London on the same day, July 26, 1951.

Costumed versions of Alice, The Mad Hatter, The White Rabbit, The Queen of Hearts and Tweedledum and Tweedledee make regular appearances at the Disney theme parks and resorts.

Walt Disney himself was long familiar with the Alice books and read them as a schoolboy.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1413

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Alice at Disneyland, pictured in 2012.