Alice in Wonderland (1966)

I love this movie so much

You won't be disappointed!

Let's be realistic.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A fascinatingly, surreal and psychedelic version of the Alice in Wonderland story. Shot in a Gothic black and white style, the cinematography is very well done and still holds up 50 years later. The cast is very very good, particularly Anne-Marie Malik in her one and only role of Alice. She's petulant and outspoken, but also very reserved and examining. She's adorable, and her delivery of lines add to the dreamlike quality of the movie. She makes the whole movie worth watching.Filmed as a TV play it's surprisingly well made, thank the BBC for that, they do some exceptional work. Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland is worth viewing if you can find it.

Carroll's two Alice books are among the greatest works ever written in the English language. Their perfection is only accessible to the intellectually enlightened, and not always to them. Miller probably considers himself one of these elected ones, but I wonder. His version is interesting, praise-worthy for making you, me and a few others think, but I honestly suspect he hasn't got the full story.This (mostly) first Carroll book is about how an intelligent, growing child begins to encounter the reality of the nasty and irrational adult world. Starting, like the Count of Monte Cristo, with a birth trauma, which is not a dream but more of a nightmare, the child is ejected into this unpleasant place, via its passage through amniotic fluid. It gives itself the prize of the thimble of life. Its staccato physical growth, both embryonic and post-birth, is accurately reflected --- the caterpillar is a perfect personification of metamorphosis --- as are its subsequent meetings with the enigmas of adult laws, punishments and regulations, the bullying, uglification and derision of mankind; the peremptoriness of authority, and its penchant for hypocritical and homiletic moralising. The book also probes time and space, but not as deeply as its wonderful sequel, Looking-Glass, which actually impresses me even more The final conclusion, in Carroll's original, is that human society is merely nothing but a house of cards, as any mature intellect will recognise, sooner or later. Jonathan leaves this out, and he shouldn't have. But I'll give him eight stars, anyway. Ms Maxwell-Muller was known to me.Miller doesn't seem to have fully cottoned on to my indubitably correct understanding of the work, and dithers about, in the persona of Ms Mallik, supposing it all to be a dream. It isn't a dream, except in the sense, as we are recently informed, that life as we know it is merely the figment of some alien person's imagination. Namely, the red king's. It's his dream, not ours. Carroll fully realised that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization, but he was not able, in his time, to investigate potentially-observable consequences.There are the usual comments by the usual nitwits about the "budget" spent on this effort. Good work has totally nothing whatever to do with "budget". The only "budget" needed by genius is a pencil and paper, set in motion by a brain. It seems incredible that there actually are people reviewing this film who have never read the book.

Just the perfect thing for a warm, woozy, Sunday afternoon. This is Carroll's Alice done to perfection; and, from beginning to end, I was enthralled. Anne-Marie M.'s playing of Alice is spot on: She's a terrible beauty and Sphinx if ever there was one, but instead of posing riddles, she disdains answering them and explores Wonderland as if it was a cipher and she's another encrypting algorithm. Miller's approach to conveying Alice's experiences in Wonderland are refreshing, relieving, when compared to so many "kiddy" pantomime versions and effects-heavy versions. The camera magic is reminiscent of Rivette's nod to Carroll, CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING..., and the conclusion, Alice's waking, is startling and rupturing, a bit like the ending of Assayas' IRMA VEP to this viewer. I was reminded, too, of Peake's GORMENGHAST crossed with De Broca's KING OF HEARTS what with Alice exploring a Victorian estate gone barking mad, bad, and dangerous to know ascending to the heights of delirium with Peter Cook's Hatter entering a courtroom as of swinging on a clock's pendulum.This is a moving picture Alice to watch again and again.

First time I saw this was on December 28th 1966 which was its first broadcast on BBC1, the next time was exactly 42 years later on a pristine BFI DVD. I was worried my childhood memories might be shattered by discovering it was simply a trippy '60's cop-out, but I needn't have been. Sure, it's a product of its time same as everything is, but it was and remains a unique filming of the classic tale by Lewis Carroll and imho the best version made so far.Young Alice is transported by dream one sunny summer day to Wonderland where many adventures befall her. Whether Carroll was attracted or not to little girls ("I like all children, except boys") and whether that explains why his diaries had some ripped out pages at key moments is something we'll never know for sure now - I think he was merely a repressed idealist – but he created a timeless story for children of all ages. His 90 page painstakingly hand written original edition which he gave to Alice in 1864 as "a Christmas gift to a dear child in memory of a summer day" is currently online from the British Museum and well worth a read.Jonathan Miller's erudite sharp focus black and white production assumed that it was really meant for satirical adults, however it still managed to impress this particular 7 year old and especially his 5 year old wife to be and their counterparts 42 years later. Favourite bits: Michael Redgrave as the Caterpillar and John Geilgud as the Mock Turtle; Alice's walk with Duchess Leo McKern down the path through the woods followed by the camera crew weaving in and out of the trees and forward and backward; almost every scene has something of note though. Maybe I could have done with a bit more of Ravi Shankar's exceptional tunes but no worries. It's a pity John Bird's and Peter Sellers' post Goon Show improvisations were left in - it's no good Miller saying it was in the spirit of Carroll when their obvious inspiration was Spike Milligan, just one eg from 1954's Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler Of Bexhill On Sea: "Suddenly! Nothing happened! But it happened suddenly mark you!" And I still wonder how much the production influenced the Beatles with their image for 1967? Apparently the finished film was considered too long by the BBC and 30 minutes were chopped off. Off with their heads - all those potential Pinteresque moments lost!This is something to treasure: an arty BBC film that was genuinely arty, entertaining and still eminently watchable generations later. It almost managed to capture the illusive illusionary qualities of dreams and those seemingly beautifully languid sunny days of the '60's – both 19th and 20th century.