Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection)

This is one in a series of posted reviews for every Alice in Wonderland title available on Amazon. When the Tim Burton rendition of AIW with Johnny Depp was due out in 2010 I thought it might be a good time to go back and watch the benchmark Walt Disney production from 1951, which I saw -or assumed I saw- as a child. It was a chance to get reacquainted with the many varied characters from the story as sort of a warm up for the Burton film. Upon viewing the Disney classic I was astonished to realize that I had likely never seen more than a few clips (at most) of that beautifully rendered Alice in Wonderland. So much seemed brand new. Nor did I have a memory of ever seeing any other "Alice" production. Then I realized that I had never read the book! Wait a minute. Where then did my memory of the Alice story come from? The curiosity sparked by that question ultimately led me over the next two years to accumulate every version of Alice in Wonderland still in existence. Well over 40 by the way!This general commentary continues as a posted review for both the 1951 AIW production from Walt Disney (this title) and the 2010 production starring Johnny Depp, as these are the two most well known Alice's. Rather than attempt to add yet-another-review here, it seemed like it might be a more fun use of the provided space to muse for a bit on the popularity and remarkable longevity of the story spawned by Lewis Carroll in 1865, as well as to share with you a bit of what I picked up while watching these 40 or so renderings of Alice in Wonderland. All other Alice productions listed by Amazon will have a specific review of the relevant production with same title used throughout.To continue...I claim to be neither a Lewis Carroll nor an Alice in Wonderland expert. Rather, I went into this project naive... ignorant of the details of the story of Alice in Wonderland... ignorant of the poems within the story, and certainly ignorant of the comings and goings in Lewis Carroll's life that set up the circumstances allowing him to imagine the story of Alice in Wonderland (originally entitled "Alice's Adventures Underground", by the way).Watching that 1951 Disney rendition of AIW was a remarkable experience. It was fun to "remember" the story of Alice again, but also, it left me with a desire to see how else the Alice story has been rendered. The Disney film is of course animation. So how would Alice in Wonderland be portrayed in other mediums? What I learned is that AIW has been rendered in about every way you can imagine. Most familiar of course is the telling of the Alice story in film, with live action, animation, and various combinations of both. In fact since the invention of film at the turn of the 20th century not a decade has gone where at least one (and usually several) fresh renderings of the Alice story been told in moving pictures.Beyond that however the Alice story has been told in many forms: audio recordings, plays, ballets, operas, and musicals. It's been done with the use of puppets and marionettes, with stop motion "Gumby style" animation, in games, in home-brew backyard productions posted to YouTube, and as an Alice in Wonderland theme park. There's even been an X rated version done as a musical (quite good). A number of established shows have done a take on the Alice story; The Muppets, Sesame Street, The Care Bears, Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, Barney, Scooby Doo, The Simpsons, Star Trek TOS, and even `Hello Kitty' took a shot at Alice.What's more, a wide variety of famous actors and celebrities have appeared in an Alice film. Stars from W.C. Fields to Cary Grant to Peter Sellers to Richard Burton... The Smothers Brothers, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Dudley Moore, Brooke Shields, Maryl Streep, Debbie Allen, Nathan Lane, Sammy Davis Jr., Ringo Starr, Terry Garr, and Whoopi Goldberg, just to name a few, have been involved in some sort of Alice production.And then there are the numerous Alice based endeavors, from Woody Allan's `Alice' with Mia Farrow, to Jefferson Airplane's `White Rabbit'.Why? Why is Lewis Carroll's story of a young girl who fell down a mythical rabbit hole so compelling? What gives the story such staying power? How is it that people of virtually all ages are so inexplicably drawn toward Alice and her land of wonders?I don't know.I've tried to steer clear of scholarly answers that address that question. There have been many attempts to do so. On the surface we can locate several plausible reasons that explain why Alice in Wonderland resonates with so many. We have a young, [seemingly] helpless girl. She's an underdog. Out of her element. A vulnerable character put in jeopardy. We ask, "what will happen next?", as the story takes one unexpected turn after another. And of course animals with human attributes in any story is compelling. Walt Disney discovered that innate attraction and made an industry of it. But do these answers get to the heart of the question?I happen to believe the explanation of Alice in Wonderland's universal appeal is that we, all of us, all human beings, young and old, have been to Wonderland ourselves. We go there in our dreams. We can all relate to the experience of logic and proportion falling away because it has happened to us. We understand how, in all the bizarreness of the wonderlands we fall into at night, that we rarely lose our heads. We should be really scared. Alice should be really scared. But somehow we accept what we see. Such is the worlds of dreams.Furthermore, how many of us have wondered if we continue to dream after we die? Are dreams what the afterlife is composed of? We don't fully understand the nature of dreams, so we contemplate upon them. Even the errant machine HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey asked if he would dream after he was turned off.And now to return to the original question I postulated. How did I somehow know the story of Alice in Wonderland without having a particular recollection of reading the book? Or seeing a movie? One answer of course is that pieces of the story just leaked into my consciousness over the years. A movie clip here. A verbal explanation there. But could there be a deeper reason? It may have to do with "archetype". It is certain that Alice in Wonderland acts as a metaphor for dreams, but the Alice Stories seems to delve deeper... into a primal archetype --a "template" if you will-- out of which human circumstances arise. Because of that we recognize Alice's dilemma in a deep and fundamental way.To write the story of Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll had in some way become conscious of the meta-physical world. The world beyond normal perception. A world that is, as Rod Serling put it, "beyond that which is known to man". Whereas visual artists such as Hieronymus Bosch reflected their visions of the other-world in paintings, Lewis Carroll's palette was paper and words. I would not be surprised if Carroll had at some point and in some fashion become "experienced", in a Jimmy Hendrix sort of way.Anyway, enjoy every telling of the Alice story you can get your hands on. Each one is unique. It's fascinating to see how the core Alice story is manifested in different media. It's fun to see how the various animals are rendered. If you can, read the books first. If you can't, remember that anything to with a playing card motif, the King and Queen of Hearts, the Knave of Hearts, the stolen tarts, the Duchess, falling down the rabbit hole and the pool of tears, the White Rabbit, growing and shrinking, the Mad Hatter (and tea party), Bill the Lizard, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, the Dormouse, the Mock Turtle, and the Gryphon, -phew- all come from Alice in Wonderland.A motif based upon a chessboard, The Red King and Queen, the White King and Queen, the Red Knight and White Knight, the Jabberwocky, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, the Lion and the Unicorn, Hatta and Haighaa (a disguised appearance by the Mad Hatter and the March Hare), and the The Walrus and the Carpenter come from Through the Looking Glass.You'll find that many renderings of Alice in Wonderland combine elements of both books, and you know...Not everyone likes what's often been doneturning the story of Alice on earbut I say, it's in spirit of funthere's really nothing at all to fearso what if Walt Disney brought forth Tweedledum and Tweedl-deeand introduced Alice to the Walrus and his carpenter bud-eeand all those talking flowers! Such beau-teesit's been done by others dontcha seeall for the sake of cre-a-ti-vi-tyyeah, Disney took license with the main stor-eeadded song and dance, and a touch of gleea lovely embellished for all to seethis movie will last for an e-ter-ni-teeso yeahyou-know-what?it's really O-K.It's all just a dream an-y-old-wayof the many many versions of this fine talehardly any of the a-dap-ta-tions failthey've all been done with narry a shred of maliceall in all it's in the spirit of our dear friend Aliceso go visit NetflixAmazonand YoutubeNo one will care...an Alice you'll love will be waiting for you thereand if the telling don't exactly track Mr. Dodgson's themelike we said before... it's only a dream---------------All the Alice reviews in this series are on Listmania:1) Click on my user name2) Click on 'Listmania!'3) Then click on See 'Entire List'.

Great Moving Great Condition.

This film is more about adult life and issues than most kids realize.

Early on in Walt Disney's career, he had wanted to tell the story of Alice in Wonderland. As early as 1923 he had begun a series of  short films , which featured a young girl in the role of Alice and integrated her live-action performance with animation. So it's no surprise that he wished to make a full-length film based upon  Lewis Carroll's classic stories . What is a surprise is that, in 1951 when the film was finally released, Walt Disney was extremely disappointed. He felt that the film lacked an emotional center and that the characters were weak and unmemorable. Perhaps his discontentment was caused by his high expectations or maybe Walt simply didn't understand that the film was a masterpiece, but whatever the reason for his disliking the film, it has gone on to become a classic (of all of the films made while Walt Disney was alive this,  Fantasia , Cinderella , Sleeping Beauty , and  101 Dalmatians  are my favorites).The story, which combines elements from  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Saw There , was unfairly criticized for deviating from Lewis Carroll's original text. But of all the film adaptations inspired by the Alice books, this is one of the most faithful to the spirit and essence of the books despite the many changes to chronology and the deletion of many sequences. Disney's Alice in Wonderland is a delightful, song-filled and beautifully animated adventure into a world of nonsense and absurdity.The story begins with Alice, who's grown tired of her lessons in history, daydreaming of a world of her own; a world where flowers talk, where animals behave like people and people behave like fools, a world where the laws of physics wouldn't apply. Suddenly her fantasy is intruded upon by a white rabbit, dressed in his finest and carrying an umbrella and pocket watch, who frantically intones, "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!" Intrigued, for she has never met a talking rabbit before, Alice runs after the White Rabbit and crawls into his rabbit hole. Within the dark confines of the hole, Alice blindly progresses until she finds herself plummeting into a dark abyss. She falls and falls and falls, all the while taking notice of her strange surroundings. When she finally lands she continues her pursuit of the White Rabbit until she comes to a door. The Doorknob insists that Alice is much too big to fit through such a tiny door, so he suggests that she drink from the bottle on the table, which appears out of nowhere, and then will change size. Alice drinks from the bottle and shrinks until she's just the right height to fit through the door when the Doorknob tells her that he is locked and that the key is on the table far above them. This is remedied when a box of cookies magically appear and when Alice takes a bite she grows taller than ever before. Though she can now reach the key, she's no longer able to fit through the door and thus she begins to cry. Soon her tears form an ocean and when Alice drinks from the bottle and shrinks again, she lands in this ocean where she is eventually carried to shore. Now her adventures really begin as she meets one bizarre character after another. First she meets the sea captain, Dodo Bird and then the mischievous brothers Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Soon she catches up to the White Rabbit only to face greater obstacles. She encounters talking flowers who think she's a common weed, an erudite caterpillar that gives her lessons in grammar, and she meets the mysterious Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. She discovers a kingdom of playing cards that are ruled over by the cruel Queen of Hearts, who demands obedience or else threatens beheading. Alice's Wonderland becomes a surreal nightmare and she barely manages to escape the only way she knows how, by waking up.This DVD contains a glorious restoration of the film as well as numerous bonus features including a Virtual Wonderland Party, two Sing Along Songs, Adventures in Wonderland set-top game, a newly discovered Cheshire Cat song, and the classic Mickey Mouse cartoon, Thru the Mirror. Also included is Walt Disney's first televised program One Hour in Wonderland, two theatrical trailers, two television introductions by Walt Disney, a behind the scenes featurette, an excerpt from the Fred Waring Show, deleted songs and storyboard sequence, and an art gallery.With all of these features this DVD deserves a place on your shelf of Disney favorites. However Walt Disney Home Entertainment has discontinued this wonderful 2-disc Masterpiece Edition of Alice in Wonderland so if you are fortunate enough to come across a copy, I would urge you to buy it as this will in all likelihood be the final DVD release of the film. The future versions will be in the Blu-ray format.

This is the Disney before all that PC foolishness absolutely incredible this Peter Pan Fantasia Lady and the tramp all absolute classics Disney is absolutely not the same now these are the ones the children should be watching and the adults as well love classic Disney

Granddaughter loved it.

Yep. It's Alice in Wonderland.. :)Works perfectly fine, no scratches. So I'm happy.

It was great and came quickly, price was right also.

This Hilarious Beautifully animated Film is simply one of the best Disney films ever.Bygone days of true illustrative talent not cgi.Absolute Treat

The film itself is great once you get it running, but my copy defaulted to Danish menus, so was an effort to work out..

lovely dvd i have it on video and wanted to get a dvd as no longer have the video player...good price better than the shops.disney favourites are always so much more expensive than the newer disney films............amazon was the best price

Alice in Wonderland Disney DVDMy Son is very pleased and delighted with this movie,colourful and enchanting.

Can't beat an old Disney classic. Excellent quality, fantastic storyline, gripping viewing. My child absolutely loves it