The Other Side of ‘Alice’

There have been almost a dozen film versions of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” which along with its sequel, “Through the Looking Glass,” has been a children’s classic since it was published in 1865.

Those on video include a disappointing 1950 French version with Carol Marsh and Bunin Puppets (Monterey); a glitzy, tiresome musical version called “Alice Through the Looking Glass” with such actors as Nanette Fabray, Jack Palance, Agnes Moorehead, Robert Coote and Ricardo Montalban (Children’s Theatre-Nelson); a dry all-star British version in 1972 with Fiona Fullerton and Ralph Richardson, Dudley Moore and Peters Sellers among others (Children Video Library, Vestron), and a charming Children’s Theatre Company and School of Minneapolis production in 1982 (MCA).

But the most famous film version is Walt Disney’s 75-minute animated feature, “Alice in Wonderland” (Disney tape and laser video disc). While missing the spirit and intent of the original, it is nevertheless a stunning piece of animation (the Cheshire Cat is inspired) using the considerable talents of more than 70 Disney studio writers, directors, animators, artists, composers and lyricists.

The film-to-video transfer is startlingly rich in color and detail, easily one of the best on the market, achieved from a pristine negative. This version of “Alice in Wonderland” is pure Disney. All of the dark nuances of Carroll’s lovesick masterpiece are missing. No pedophiles allowed in this Magic Kingdom.

We have “Alice” to thank for “Dreamchild,” a stunning piece of cinema that is one of the most ambitious, inventive and terrifyingly enchanting films every made. “Dreamchild” passed through American theaters almost overnight in 1985, virtually unnoticed by media and unseen by the public. Happily, it is now available on video (Cannon). It also happens to be on KCET this week (Wednesday at 9:30 p.m.) as part of the channel’s celebration of Dennis Potter, the film’s writer and executive producer.

“Dreamchild” tells the story of 80-year-old Alice Hargreaves, who at the age of 10 inspired the Rev. Charles Dodgson (who took the pen name of Lewis Carroll) to write “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

It is 1932, the year of the Lewis Carroll centenary, and Mrs. Hargreaves is invited to Columbia University in New York to receive an honorary degree. It is her first visit to the New World and the trip awakens dark memories she has locked away-memories of the summer of 1862 when as a young girl, Alice Liddell, she inspired a stuttering, lovesick Dodgson.

The older Alice finds herself slipping into flashbacks of that early life and then into a darker, almost frightening vision of Wonderland. (“Dodgson is coming back to haunt me,” she says at one point. “I don’t know what to do.”) Finally, she is forced to acknowledge and perhaps understand Dodgson’s strange love for her.

Coral Browne as the older Alice gives a tender, all-encompassing performance that ranges from an arrogant Victorian dowager to a vain, almost girlish, woman who relishes the value of a dollar to an aged, feverish woman almost out of control, flooded by memories too frightening for any 19th-century woman to admit. Ian Holm’s Dodgson is a moving, thought-out portrait of a man possessed. He is letter-perfect as the odd suitor of young Alice, at once charming, wimpish, ardent, evil, pathetic and, finally, touching.

The other performers are equally as good, especially Amelia Shankley as the young Alice, who realizes that she has a power she doesn’t fully understand over Dodgson and who shows us that she isn’t afraid to use it even though she eventually fears its terrifying implications. Peter Gallagher is first-rate as the boyish hustler oozing with charm and who falls for the forlorn orphan, who is Mrs. Hargreaves’ paid companion (Nicola Cowper).

The bare outline of the plot doesn’t begin to touch on the inspirations contained in this impeccable film.

Potter, one of the most imaginative writers in today’s cinema and television (he created the wickedly clever and original BBC series “Pennies From Heaven,” starring Bob Hoskins and the sanitized American version with Steve Martin, as well as the BBC’s “The Singing Detective”).

He has put together a flawless piece-the 1930s are impeccably reproduced. The period music is perfectly merged with a tense atmospheric score (the original music is by Stanley Myers and it is chillingly effective). The mingling of past and present is Potter’s tour de force, especially the underlying terror to be found in Potter’s probing dissection of key parts of Carroll’s text.

The late Jim Henson’s Creature Shop has produced shocking creatures that underline the older Alice’s slow realization of the tension and meaning of Dodgson’s love for the young Alice. These are familiar Wonderland characters made grotesque-the March Hare’s crooked, dirty teeth; the Mad Hatter’s swollen eyes; the monstrous Gryphon that sets the tone from the first scene to the last.

There is not a weak moment in the film, from the splendid beginning to the equally powerful end where we find ourselves in a dark sea and island landscape out of Carroll’s darker imagination. Here, the Gryphon, the Mock Turtle and the older Alice begin the proceedings and the young Alice and Dodgson end the film hand-in-hand.