Though I really enjoyed watching the new Tim Burton version in 3D – despite some critical points one could add, but are out there anyway – it is so worth to look up and focus a bit on some older versions.
One amazing find has been made by the BFI – the British Film Institute – which has just recently published a restored version of an as early as 1903 shot Alice movie. It is free to be watched on youtube.
| The first-ever film version of Lewis Carroll’s tale has recently been restored by the BFI National Archive from severely damaged materials. Made just 37 years after Lewis Carroll wrote his novel and eight years after the birth of cinema, the adaptation was directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, and was based on Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations. In an act that was to echo more than 100 years later, Hepworth cast his wife as the Red Queen, and he himself appears as the Frog Footman. Even the Cheshire cat is played by a family pet. | |
| With a running time of just 12 minutes (8 of which survive), ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was the longest film produced in England at that time. Film archivists have been able to restore the film’s original colours for the first time in over 100 years. | watch the entire episode, which could be rescued here |
| Another great version has just been re-released as a new DVD version: | |
| Alice in Wonderland, the haunting, nightmarish 1966 BBC Television version written and directed by Jonathan Miller, and starring Peter Sellers, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Michael Redgrave, Wilfrid Brambell, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, John Bird, Leo McKern, and Anne-Marie Mallik as | |
| Alice. Shot in pinpoint, ghostly black and white, with a dream-like editing schematic, actors dressed not in costumes but in period clothes, and a jarring, seductive, beautiful score by Ravi Shankar, this Alice in Wonderland is like no other version you’ll see of the Lewis Carroll classic. | watch on youtube |
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talking about lewis carroll’s reputation – and how best to rehabilitate it