In this post we are going to look at a film that makes one of the greatest uses of stop motion animation. We are going to look at the 1988 film "Alice", directed (and written for the screen) by Czechoslovakian director, animator, story teller, and master surrealist Jan Svankmajer. This film was not the first time "Alice in Wonderland" had been adapted using a combination of live action and stop motion animation. This device had been used in 1949 by Lou Bunin in his film "Alice in Wonderland", not to be confused with the Disney film which was released in 1951, and featured only hand drawn animation. Even before that Walt Disney made extremely loose versions of "Alice in Wonderland" using live action and hand drawn animation in a series called the "Alice Comedies", which released it's first film "Alice's Wonderland" in 1923. However "Alice" (1988) is the best use of this device, and in my opinion the best film adaption of "Alice in Wonderland".
I pick this movie to talk about for 3 reasons:
1. It is a masterpiece
2. Too many people have not heard of it
3. I want to discuss how film theory and analysis can be very useful for discussing animated films as well as live action, and a Jan Svankmajer film is a great place to start such a discussion (despite that live action is also used, the animation in his films warrants serious discussion as much the live action).
"Alice" (1988) is a perfect film to use as proof for the auteur theory. The auteur theory was first proposed (At least to the earliest we can trace it) in the French film magazine "Cahiers du Cinéma". This magazine had a huge influence on how film is looked at as an art form, and featured future great French live-action filmmakers such as François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard as writers. The auteur theory is the belief that a film is the creative vision of the director and that the director is essentially the author of the film. An auteur director is a director whose distinctive style and personal themes can be seen in nearly all their work, and can not be mistaken for any other director. Jan Svankmajer is definitely an auteur director and "Alice" is defiantly proof of this.
Jan Svankmajer is know for (by the people he is known by) his surreal and odd ball stop-motion animation, borderline obsession with characters eating (you will know what I mean after you watch "Alice"), darkly hilarious sense of humor, exaggerated sound effects, and disturbing subconscious feel to many of his films. "Alice" contains all of these in abundance. Svankmajer felt a film version of "Alice in Wonderland" should not be made as a fairy tale but rather as a subconscious dream. He stated "While a fairy tale has got an educational aspect – it works with the moral of the lifted forefinger (good overcomes evil), dream, as an expression of our unconscious, uncompromisingly pursues the realization of our most secret wishes without considering rational and moral inhibitions, because it is driven by the principle of pleasure. My Alice is a realized dream.". Therefore in this film Alice fully enters a Freudian dream, instead of the more fantasy based one as we have become accustomed to. Here is a very insightful interview with Jan Svankmajer to help further explain this point.
http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/features/2011/06/14/interview-with-jan-352vankmajer/
Most of this is naturally shown through the directing. The imagery and the way it is presented is more disturbing than whimsical. The mixture of live-action and animation help to make this film feel much less real. This film in fact never attempts reality it instead in every visual way possible subverts it. This makes the film truly feel like our own subconscious dream, a feat rarely paralleled in film (animation, live action or a mixture of both). This is truly a director's film, and a master piece.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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