Alice

Jan Švankmajer (1988)

Alice is a 1988 dark fantasy film written and directed by Jan Švankmajer.Its original Czech title is Něco z Alenky, which means “Something from Alice”. It is a loose adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s first Alice book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), about a girl who follows a white rabbit into a bizarre fantasy land. Alice is played by Kristýna Kohoutová. The film combines live action with stop-motion animation, and is distinguished by its dark and uncompromising production design.

For Švankmajer, a prolific director of short films for more than two decades, Alice became his first venture into feature-length filmmaking. The director had been disappointed by other adaptations of Carroll’s book, which interpret it as a fairy tale. His aim was instead to make the story play out like an amoral dream. The film won the feature film award at the 1989 Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

15 Comments

  1. It’s on my to-read list….about 50 books down. So maybe when I’m 75 I’ll reach it………? Ha ha. I am a little intrigued, tho……
    Thanks.

  2. Man, if that’s true, even a little bit….I’m envious. I could never be that free. I pride myself on being outside of the box somewhat, but….throwing the novel up in the air and taking what comes? Well, I obviously am well-seated inside the box. I just have a little flap open and maybe half my foot poking out, lol !

  3. I read Naked Lunch a number of years ago. I guess you can read the chapter in any order. I heard that after he wrote it he threw the finished papers up into the air and the order he collected them I was the order in which they were published. Though I don’t think that is completely accurate, I do think there is an element of truth to it.

  4. Totally! I got Cronenberg mixed up with Lynch and completely forgot about Burroughs. Yeah!

  5. Reminds me of some Tim Burton and David Lynch, like The Naked Lunch. I think he succeeded with the amoral dream instead of a fairy tale!

  6. Is this the whole film broken down into 3 parts? I know I’ve seen the first one, and I think the other two are part of the whole. He is creative and creepy at the same time.

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