Dennis Potter
has written so many great, rare and unreleased television plays for the
BBC over the years. A disappointingly substantial number of them have
yet to be made available in any form, while others are out only on some
pretty obscure discs. One of his earliest, and long unreleased, is
Alice, a "Wednesday Play" from 1965: a more realistic and tragic take on the relationship between
Lewis Carroll and the real
Alice Liddell who he crafted his stories for.
Update 9/10/15 - 11/11/22: Kino has given
Dreamchild a much needed upgrade to blu. 'nuff said!
Here we see Carroll, excellently played by
George Baker, as a reclusive, stuttering professor with an undying devotion to the very under-aged daughter of his dean (
Upstairs Downstairs'
David Langton).
Nothing overtly sexual or immoral happens, but Alice's mother slowly
catches on that there's something inappropriate in this man's attentions
to her the girl, spending all of his time with her, buying her gifts,
inviting her over to be photographed. But at the same time, something
genuinely beautiful and innocent is developing out of his true feelings
for her: these wonderful stories he creates to win her affections.
Throughout the film, we see moments and characters that inspire some of the most famous scenes from
Alice In Wonderland,
and occasionally we enter into the storybook world itself. It's an
honest look at human relations seldom examined, and a psychological
character study too honest to simply present us with anyone to demonize
or romanticize. When Carroll ultimately takes his first book of
Wonderland stories to an appreciative publisher, they're all too eager
to have their illustrator visit the real Alice for their pages, but
there's the awkward moment when Carroll must explain to them that the
family now objects to the entire affair.
In 1985, Potter wrote the screenplay for a film called
Dreamchild, which is often referred to as a remake of
Alice.
That would certainly make sense... a small but highly praised BBC
teleplay getting turned into a feature film happens often enough, even
specifically with Potter's works; and certainly this film has many of
the same themes and a rough premise in common with
Alice. In
fact, it has a few scenes replayed word for word. But I really don't
think it's fair to call this a remake; it's actually quite a different
film, that just happens to stem from the same root idea.
Certainly, it's another story of "the real Alice" and an implied darker,
even abusive, relationship between her and Carroll. But it's quite a
different story. Despite its title, Alice was about Carroll; Alice was just the catalyst. Dreamchild,
on the other hand, is about Alice. This film is set in the 1930s, when
Alice is now 80, visiting America for the very first time because she's
receiving an honorary degree from an ivy league university as part of a
celebration for Carroll's centenary. She's surprised to learn just what a
cultural icon the book has become, as she's instantly beset by
reporters who don't understand how haunted she is by the story's
characters (angry monsters brilliantly brought to life by Jim Henson). In Alice, Carroll seemed to simply want more than there could be with Alice, but in Dreamchild,
we're left to infer that something immoral did indeed happen, and she's
a survivor forced by the book's lasting popularity to confront her demons to
her very last days.
There is so much story that isn't even hinted at in
Alice.
Peter Gallagher is
a major character playing a reporter who Alice rejects but eventually
warms to after he shows her how much money there is to be made in
exploiting her newfound American fame. There's a whole subplot, then,
about her young assistant who she brought over from England and tries to
keep under her thumb (a sort of mirror, where she tries to keep Lucy
infantilized just like Carroll wished of her). The scenes this has in
common with
Alice are all flashbacks from her youth with Carroll, this time played by
Ian Holme.
Again, those scenes are the same down to the precise word; but they
only make up maybe 15% of this movie, which has an entirely different
tone and very different things to say. Certainly production values are
much higher here - compare the gryphon and the mock turtle in the
screenshots from each production above. But I have to say, key scenes -
like the one where Liddell's family asks Carroll to recite a silly poem
from his book and Alice and her sisters laugh and get distracted by
their boyfriends, because they've outgrown his childrens' stories - are
more heartbreaking in
Alice. Truly, though, they're two very
different and excellent original works by Potter; and you'd be doing
yourself a disservice to only see one or the other.
Both of these films were unavailable for ages. However, if you'll pardon
a brief detour (it'll tie in eventually), what was released, was a
rather smart 1966 BBC adaptation of
Alice In Wonderland by
Jonathan Miller, who also directed the terrific
Whisper and I'll Come To You.
This is a faithful adaptation of the story by someone who greatly
disliked the Disney cartoon, and it features a brilliant cast including
John Gielguld,
Peter Sellers,
Michael Redgrave and
Peter Cook. It's a more mature version, with a strong score by
Ravi Shankar and all the characters (the white rabbit, etc) portrayed simply as humans, and the entire adventure as a dream.
I used to have the BFI DVD of it, which had some excellent features,
including an audio commentary by Miller, a vintage featurette on
Shankar's scoring process, and an old silent film version of
Alice In Wonderland
from 1908 with commentary by a BFI expert. But I upgraded that old
edition for this US DVD when it came out in 2010, as it carried over all
of those extras but also included the DVD debut of Potter's
Alice!
I kind of wish I'd hung onto that BFI disc (also released in the US by
Home Vision), because look at the ghosting in that screenshot above. I'm
pretty sure that's a PAL to NTSC conversion issue the original UK disc
didn't have. But I'd have bought it anyway, just for
Alice. I would've bought
Alice on DVD just by itself, because it's terrific. I don't care if they've tucked it away as an extra; it's an amazing package.
And
Dreamchild? That finally came out as just an MOD DV-R from
MGM in 2011. It's in its original widescreen OAR, and it was fantastic
to
finally have this movie. But DV-R is pretty disappointing and looks
really compressed. It did actually get a proper, pressed DVD
release in the UK from 101 Films in 2015. But apparently it's the
same transfer and no extras or anything. Besides, now in 2022 we've got
a proper blu-ray from Kino, and it's even a bit of a special edition.
Everything else is now ancient history.
 |
2011 MGM DVDR top; 2022 Kino BD bottom.
|
It's nice to see this isn't just the same master slapped onto an HD disc, although honestly, I would've been happy with that. Especially since we're coming from a wonky, interlaced DV-R, not even a proper DVD. But this is even better! Obviously the compression is vastly improved, the image is sharper being in HD and the interlacing is corrected. But beyond that, we have fresh, corrected colors so everything doesn't look so orange anymore, and the aspect ratio has been corrected from 1.82:1 to 1.85:1, slightly adjusting the framing of the entire picture. Did I mention they made it less orange? Because that really makes a big difference.
The original mono audio has been bumped up to DTS-HD, and optional English subtitles have been added to the blu.
And we finally get some extras. We start out with an audio commentary by expert
Lee Gambin, which is okay. His expertise is clearly more on Henson than Potter, and he goes on a long 20+ minute jag of just reading every puppeteer's IMDB credits one by one. But there's some good stuff in there, too, if you've got the patience. The other main extra might take a little patience, too. It's an audio-only interview by Gambin with director
Peter Medak. To be clear, Medak is a director, but not
Dreamchild's. He's here to share memories of star
Coral Browne, who he worked with on another picture. Unfortunately, he doesn't remember much more than the fact that she was sexy. He's asked, for instance, if he ever saw
Dreamchild, which Browne was immensely proud of; and Medak says he's pretty sure he did but doesn't remember it at all. Like the commentary though, there are some interesting moments if you've got the time. It's an unedited and slow phone call, including a long bit at the end where Gambin struggles to end the conversation... I can only imagine the reason they left all that in is because nobody listened to it before sticking it on the disc. But it's still a nice, little bonus. Kino also includes the theatrical trailer and a couple bonus trailers. So this is easily a must-have for anyone's collection.
Now, maybe we can hope for an HD upgrade of
Alice? There are still a substantial number of excellent Potter teleplays left to be released on DVD, let alone blu, so maybe the BBC could give us a box boxed set. Fingers crossed, but I'm not holding my breath. So I strongly recommend the Kino blu and the 2 Entertain DVD, because more people should really see both... and Miller's
adaptation too, for that matter. But only viewers who are prepared for
something a little heavier than a Disney musical.
