Jan Svankmajer's Alice

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Horrorphile - January 2009

Neco z Alenky (Jan Svankmajer's Alice)

January 8th 2009 23:43

Alice (1988), Jan Svankmajer’s version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is freakydeaky stuff indeed. Easily the strangest, most surreal interpretation of the novel ever to have been made into a film (which is saying something, since the novel itself is an hallucinogenic trip-and-a-half!)

Young Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová) sits by a brook with her sister, bored. Then back at her house in a cluttered room she spots the stuffed white rabbit come alive and break free of its metal fixtures and out of its glass container. The rabbit, wide-eyed and rather creepy-looking, dons clothes and pulls a time-piece from within a hole in its chest where sawdust is leaking out. “Oh no, I’m late!” exclaims the white rabbit (spoken by Alice), and off he dashes beyond the room and across a desolate stony terrain toward a table on the horizon.

Kristyna Kohoutova as Alice

The white rabbit reaches the table, pulls open the table drawer and promptly disappears inside. Alice is mesmerized. She swiftly follows suit, and even manages to slide into the drawer herself. From there her wild and crazy adventures pursuing the white rabbit begin.

Follow the white rabbit

Svankmajer combines live action with stop-motion animation to startling effect. Alice (apart from her sister, but we never see her face), is the only human character in the movie. All other characters are animals and nightmare creatures which have been animated using stop-motion. From the white rabbit to a black mouse, from snake-like socks to lizard skeletons, from scurrying beetles to a slab of steak; all brought to life in Svankmajer’s distinctly unsettling way.

Alice shrinks, but now the door key's too big

The Cheshire caterpiller

It’s a loose adaptation of Alice in Wonderland; there's the white rabbit of course, but there’s no Cheshire Cat (although a sock with large human dentures appears to be a cross between the caterpillar and the cat). The Queen of Hearts is far more exacting; her repeated order “Off with their heads!” is actually carried out!

Scissors and drawers are reoccurring motifs, as is Alice’s shrinking and growing (after she eats a tart or drinks inky liquid). The wonderland in Alice is a far creepier, filthier and claustrophobic place than the famous Disney-animated version I grew up with. This is the stuff of bad dreams, packed full of familiar objects from around the house that have become symbols of menace and dark intrigue.

That's gone quite far enough, said Alice

The film is a Czech-UK co-production. Although all the sound and dialogue has been post-synch, it appears it was originally in Czech, with an English-language version added later (Camilla Powers provides the voice for Alice in the DVD version I have). It’s a noisy film, and at times irritating, especially in the doll's house scene with the sound of a baby crying continually (the baby turns into a piglet), but more grating is Alice’s narrating all the dialogue with the suffix “… said the white rabbit”, “… muttered the Mad Hatter”, “… thought Alice to herself”, after every line accompanied by an extreme close-up of Alice’s mouth (out of synch with the English).

Alice as her own doll

There is much to marvel, and on numerous occasions chortle over. The film has an abundance of inventive imagery. I loved the way the wonderland was labyrinthine, just as dreams have their way of snaking and coiling. Kristýna Kohoutová is wonderful (pun intended) as Alice, all of seven or eight years old, occasionally gasping in horror, occasionally giggling, but mostly dealing matter-of-factly with her bizarre, yet compelling predicament. It was to be her only film performance.

A fish footman delivers a message from the Queen of Hearts

There are several occasions when Alice has been shrunk that Svankmajer steps in and replaces Kohoutová with a stop-motion doll, and even one point after Alice falls into a saucepan of milk that Alice emerges as Kohoutová in a life-size doll shell! Just when you think Svankmajer has pulled all his rabbits out of a hat, he sprinkles further magic dust and conjures yet another oneiric manifestation.

Alice struggles to find the right size

But it must be said Alice is by no means designed for young children’s viewing. This is definitely a mature person’s film, as there is much phantasmorgorical content within the movie that would spark nightmares in a young, impressionable mind. Just as Svankmajer's interpretation of the fable of Faust, Alice is a bittersweet taste to be acquired. There is cruelty, even perversions (not sexuality, but morality). I’m curious of Kristýna Kohoutová. I have to assume she has her own kids now, and I wonder has or will she ever show the film to her own children …?

Although the DVD transfer wasn’t decent, the digital grain and colour palette discrepancy added further atmosphere to a film already drenched in mood and texture. Alice is a profoundly unusual, richly experimental, and deeply memorable film experience.

I couldn't find the trailer, but here's an extended sequence which features my favourite moments when the Queen of Hearts has the Mad Hatter and the March Hare's heads cut off, and then passes through her own playing card door:

Alice DVD is courtesy of Siren Visual, many thanks!

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

7 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Damo

January 9th 2009 04:29

I can't see the video for some reason.

Comment by Bryn

January 9th 2009 04:56

Horrorphile

That's odd, it plays fine for me. Try again.

Comment by Anonymous

January 10th 2009 00:01

Great post! Scary!

Comment by Jarrah

January 10th 2009 02:05

Back to the Eighties

Yeah, I've always though Alice's Adventures were pretty disturbing -- this my friend takes it a whole new level.

Kinda funny too though...lol

Comment by Bryn

January 11th 2009 02:19

Horrorphile

Jarrah, a whole new level indeed! And yes, blackly humorous too!

Comment by Natalie 2

January 15th 2009 07:52

My Life My Muse
Beta Girl Blog

A co worker of mine who is familiar with my love of all things Alice in Wonderland purchased this DVD for me as a gift.

It was so sublimely disturbing, and really was everything that I love about the creepy tale of Alice.

You're right, Carrol's tale is surreal enough on paper, and this one takes it a step further.

While not my favorite interpretation, still very worthwhile for my collection!

Comment by Bryn

January 15th 2009 22:56

Horrorphile

Natalie, what a great gift! So what is your fave interpretation? What are your thoughts on Tim Burton currently doing a version? ... I think with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter ....

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