The 1980s saw a wave of dark fantasy films that felt like moody fairytales. Some films, likeNeil Jordan’sThe Company of Wolves,are retellings of actual fairytales, while others, likeJim Henson’sLabyrinthandDark Crystal,are brand-new material. Building on identifiable children’s stories automatically attracts a younger audience, especially when the marketing for the film plays up the source material. In 1988,Jan ŠvankmajerreleasedAlice, one of the darkest versions ofLewis Carroll’sAlice in Wonderland. Well aware of his possible audience, one of Alice’s first lines is, “Now you will see a film made for children…perhaps.” Half stop-motion, half live-action,Alicesees a youngKristýna Kohoutováplay the titular Alice. The film follows the basic framework of the originalAlice in Wonderlandwhile dilating the surrealist logic and coming-of-age aspects to unsettle the audience with a more subliminal type of horror. For thosewho have theorized whetherAlice in Wonderlandis really a surrealist horror,Aliceis the film that commits to combining the original’s strangeness with pointed darkness.
‘Alice’ Fits into the Dark Fantasy Genre of the 1980s
Fairytales have an absurdist logic, and nowhere is that clearer than inAlice.There isvery little dialogue,all spoken through close-ups of Kohoutová’s mouth as she speaks for herself and other characters. This sparse dialogue leaves the visuals with a lot of heavy lifting to do.Alice’s aesthetics are tailored to unnervethe audience and help silently teach the rules of this Wonderland,which is a far more hostile place than in the original.In Disney’s film adaptation of the tale, Wonderland is bright and full of, as the name implies, wonder.Švankmajer’s vision is eerie and disturbing.Contained within the walls of Alice’s Soviet-era apartment building, Wonderland has gray walls with peeling paint and white rabbits that bleed sawdust. Nothing is as it should be,with a creeping sense of dread building every time Alice turns a corner.
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Sometimes the road to “happily ever after” takes some dark turns.
One of the many strengths of Švankmajer’sAliceis how he warps familiar characters into fitting his grim aesthetic. While Alice is primarily played by an actual actress,the other characters appear through stop-motion. The White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter are grungy, taxidermied animals. The White Rabbit is the first bit of Wonderland that Alice encounters, andhe is nothing like previous iterations.Combining the taxidermied state of the hare with the stop-motion method, Švankmajer’s White Rabbit moves at a quick, rickety clip.
The sensation of watching him jet across the screen is not unlike the first time a zombie appears in a horror flick, where the audience and the character can tell something isn’t quite right with the way the far-off figure is moving. After the first close-up shot of the White Rabbit’s yellowed teeth snapping at the camera, the audience knows they’re in unfamiliar territory. Sock worms with teeth trash across the floor at Alice’s feet, creatures with exposed skulls scuttle around, and the Cheshire Cat has never looked more terrifying. Everyone Alice meets in Wonderland has a gloss of danger to their design.The visual language comes across as loopy dream logic, except it’s more of a nightmare.
The Alice of ‘Alice’ Reveals the Scariest Part of This Movie
The creepy taxidermied animals andeerie stop-motionare not the most unnerving aspects ofAlice.Peppered throughout the film are close-ups of Kohoutová’s chapped lips, speaking original lines of text from Carroll’s book. This framing device, combined with frequent shots of Alice’s skirts blowing up and bouts of her turning into a porcelain doll, adds an extra layer of unease to the film. At one point, while a doll, Alice gets trapped in a room full of specimen jars.This overt commodification and objectification of Alice clues the audience into Švankmajer’s specific interest in thecoming-of-age aspectofAlice in Wonderland.
Many dark fantasies of the 1980s tell the tale of ateenage girl coming into her own, often through the lens of her sexual awakening. Sarah fromLabyrinthgets caught in a game of cat and mouse with David Bowie’s sexualized Jareth. Rosaleen ofThe Company of Wolvesplays a far more daring version of Little Red Riding Hood, with the wolves and the huntsman as her romantic interests. But what sets Alice apart from them is that she is still a very young child. As she progresses,Alice is not coming of age so much as having the nastier elements of the adult world foisted upon her in the form of violence, cruelty, and sexualization. One of the uglier aspects of growing up is the sudden awareness of others' unwanted perceptions. Švankmajer puts the audience in the position of being both the subject and the observer. At once, the viewer is Alice, trapped like any of the specimens in the jars, and also one of the animals who locked her in.
Švankmajer’sAliceis a trip.The mash-up of stop-motion and live-action creates an uncanny valley effect, building on the surrealist tone of previous film versions.Alicebreaks new ground by fully committing to just how scary Wonderland can be. Švankmajer’s version of growing up is the most adult, fleshing out the darker implications of Carroll’s story that Disney glossed over.Aliceis as good as a dark fantasy retelling gets, elevating that original eeriness and bringing it to new heights.
Aliceis available to buy or rent on Amazon.
