MOVIE REVIEW : ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN MANHATTAN

A film about an aristocratic 80-year-old Englishwoman arriving in Manhattan in 1932 to receive an honorary doctorate from Columbia University, and also boasting some of Muppeteer Jim Henson’s whimsical creatures, certainly has got to be different.

That Englishwoman, however, is a special old lady, Alice Liddell Hargreaves, for whom the Rev. Charles Dodgson wrote (under the pen name Lewis Carroll) “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” seven decades before, and she’s come to New York for a celebration of the centenary of Dodgson’s birth.

“Dreamchild” (at the Beverly Center Cineplex) is also a very special film, one that turns upon the sentimental notion that Mrs. Hargreaves, in the course of her brief, unexpectedly hectic stay, comes at last to appreciate the man who wrote the children’s classic she inspired. Yet “Dreamchild” is saved from sentimentality by the exquisite tact of director Gavin Millar; by that most imaginative of writers, Dennis Potter (the man who thought up “Pennies From Heaven”), and, above all, by a truly splendid performance by Coral Browne as the aged Alice.

Wearing a Queen Mary hat and suitably conservative attire, Mrs. Hargreaves, a proper Victorian if ever there was one, arrives on the Berengaria accompanied by her wistful, dependent young companion (Nicola Cowper), only to attract a gaggle of reporters and photographers that would be the envy of a movie star. The press sees in her a story to cheer up their Depression-ridden readers; one brash young reporter (Peter Gallagher), freshly fired from the New York Herald Tribune, sees in Mrs. Hargreaves a chance to cash in by persuading her to accept the flood of endorsements sure to come her way. And the way to Mrs. H., Gallagher not surprisingly concludes, is via the naive Cowper.

An Art Deco Manhattan becomes as much a Wonderland for Mrs. Hargreaves as the one Dodgson invented for her so long before. These rude, slangy, overly familiar Americans seem to come at her from all directions. When all this hubbub and the city’s immensity threaten to overwhelm and exhaust her to the point of inducing intimations of mortality, she begins to think about her long-ago childhood and about Dodgson, whom she “scarce remembers.” In these moments she becomes not merely the 10-year-old Alice (pert Amelia Shankley), but also Alice in Wonderland as she encounters such beloved creatures as the Mad Hatter and March Hare, which Jim Henson’s Creature Shop brings to life with the charm of Sir John Tenniel’s original drawings.

Mrs. Hargreaves, her companion and even the reporter evolve as people of complexity--although Mrs. Hargreaves’ surprising relish for money is unexplained. None more so than the Dodgson of Alice’s memory, so meticulously played by Ian Holm. Mrs. Hargreaves proves warmer, more capable of reflection than expected beneath that frosty exterior; her companion not such a ninny, and the reporter not without feeling. But Holm’s stuttering, often ineffectual-seeming Dodgson conveys something much more difficult; a forbidden passion for the child Alice that he had the discipline and talent to transmute into enduring art.

“Dreamchild” is a first-rate “double” period piece, in which production designer Roger Hall ingeniously evokes in precise detail not only Victorian England but also Depression-era Manhattan. He suggests what some have always suspected: that there have may well have been more wrenching social changes between the mid-19th Century and the first third of the 20th Century than between the ‘30s and the present--nuclear power, TV and rock music notwithstanding. Stanley Myers’ score gracefully bridges the two eras, as well as fantasy and reality.

But the signal triumphs of “Dreamchild” (rated PG for the implications about Dodgson) are in its performances, especially by Browne and Holm (although with “Dance With a Stranger” and “Wetherby” this makes three repressed types for him in a row; so a change of pace may be in order). How delightful it is to hear Browne speak the Queen’s English--what a pleasure to see her size up Gallagher, then exclaim with relish, “What a fraudulent young man you are!”