Plenty of them are only a few lines long, or sung in the background. This movie technically has more songs in it than any other Disney film, but that ‘technically’ comes with a big ol’ asterisk. Characters are combined and abandoned, the original, lyrical dialogue is mixed willy-nilly with insipid new dialogue, and the songs… Ohhhhhh the songs. Taking them out of that order and smooshing them together kills the flow. Carroll put his scenes in a very precise order, and in two separate books, the second of which was very specifically chess-themed. But it’s essential to understanding why this film fails on a narrative level. I got that out of my system with Pinocchio. I’m not going to do a lot of comparing to the book, because I don’t really like those kinds of reviews. Why, they hadn't even finished the sets before they started filming. A book which consists almost entirely of one unconnected scene after another will not necessarily adapt to film well without a lot of work. (Warning: My language tends to run a mite saucier on the other page.) The upshot is this: Film is different than literature, and has different needs. First of all, let me say that in regards to the essential unfilmability of the books, you can read this entry on my mostly-disused general purposes blog. Okay, this is the post were I get in trouble with my roommate, who I believe counts this as her absolute favorite movie for ever and ever for all time infinity. So eat and drink anything that suggests that you do, and let’s talk about Alice in Wonderland. But ol’ Uncle Walter was convinced he could make it work. They’re meandering, mostly plotless, unashamedly weird works based on logic puzzles and literary wordplay, and the main character has absolutely no arc or dramatic through line. So why did they settle on Snow White instead? Why did he spend 12 years developing Alice before it finally saw release? Well, the books are essentially unfilmable. In the mid-30s, he had intended to produce a full-length Technicolor version of those, going so far as to do screen tests with Mary Pickford as Alice. His early work in Hollywood included a series of silent live action-animation hybrids dubbed “The Alice Comedies”, which took inspiration from the books. See, Walt had always loved the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll. So after the bonkers success of Cinderella, it was time for Walt to return to his two favorite pastimes: Fulfilling his lifelong goals and making unprofitable movies.
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January 2023
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