The Alice In Wonderland Walt Disney Didn’t Want You To See
Posted by Ross Rosenberg
In 1951 Souvaine Selective Pictures was set to release Alice in Wonderland featuring a combination of live action and stop-motion animation by pioneering animator Lou Bunin. Bunin had worked for Diego Rivera in Mexico and was behind the earliest known stop-motion production in the U.S.
Alas, there was only one problem, RKO Radio Pictures was set to release Walt Disney’s three million dollar version of Alice in Wonderland and they weren’t comfortable with competition. Claiming that a second Alice film would confuse moviegoers, Disney and RKO successfully sued to have Bunin’s film released eighteen months later in the U.S. with a severely limited distribution, despite the fact that Bunin had already premiered the film in Paris in 1949.
The above is a clip from that film. Unfortunately the negatives have been damaged, leaving us with a poor quality print. However, this does not take away from the fact that, while the white rabbit may be the stuff of nightmares, Bunin’s film is much more faithful to its source material.
It is hard to imagine anyone accepting the veracity of Disney’s claim that this movie, whose budget was half of his feature, would so confuse customers as to cause “irreparable damage” to him and RKO. In the end their victory did nothing to help when the movie was released. Critically panned, despite being a masterpiece of animation, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland achieved little success at the box office, though one can imagine that it fared better than Souvaine Selective Pictures’s. In the end, it only served to make the loss of Bunin’s film that much more unfortunate.
Alice in Wonderland: by Lou Bunin [YouTube] : poeTV
Categories: Animation, Artists, Clips, Disney, Film, Literature, Movies
Posted at 10:57 am on November 12, 2007
11 Comments -
You might want to check out Jan Svankmayer’s film Alice as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_%281988_film%29
Comment by SM — November 12, 2007 @ 11:02 am
I knew Milla Jovovich was a bewitching vampire and as she plays the lead role in this masterpiece it only proves my theory.
I swear, this chick looks just like her, or the other way around at least.
Crazy!
Epheros Aldor – Apostle of Cale
Comment by Epheros Aldor — November 12, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
Yeah, Svankmayer’s Alice is just horrific. Dead rabbits whose innards continuously fall out of their puncturing, sewn-up stomaches. Grotesque dolls waddling around.
Sadly it’s also a painfully boring watch.
Emily
Comment by Emily — November 12, 2007 @ 10:12 pm
Double post, but here you go.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=C5wHMgTPF-s
You can get most of the film off of Youtube, I think.
To be honest, I think the guy’s trailers of his films are slightly more interesting. Here’s one for a newer film of his, Little Otik.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qdLUrC6copM
“When a childless couple learn that they cannot have children, it causes great distress. To ease his wife’s pain, the man finds a stump in the backyard and chops it and varnishes it into the shape of a child. However the woman takes the root as her baby and starts to pretend that it is real. When the root takes life they seem to have gained a child; but its appetite is much greater than that of a normal child.”
Comment by Emily — November 12, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
Dark, creepy and annoying maybe, hardly boring. Do you consider they Quay Brothers boring?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_KHf3RqmvE
They based most of their animation on Svankmejer… and many NIN videos are based on Quay animations. Alice isn’t something to own on DVD and watch multiple times, without a doubt. And the audio is awful but the animation works.
Comment by SM — November 14, 2007 @ 1:21 am
My first reply didn’t take… Jan S may be creepy and annoying, not really boring. The Brothers Quay were heavilly influenced by him… voilà:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_KHf3RqmvE
And of course, the Quays were major influences on NIN videos. It’s all one creepy squidly dark digestive system we navigate through… some parts of the system are less interesting than others I suppose.
Comment by SM — November 14, 2007 @ 1:32 am
It achieved little success at the box office because it is now ‘old hat’. Old stories being re-vamped are not what the kids want nowadays,
Pete
Comment by Peter W — January 18, 2008 @ 5:49 am
The reason it did not do well at the box office is that these types of films are ‘old hat’. Kids nowadays do not want to see old films re-generated.
Pete
Comment by Peter W — January 18, 2008 @ 5:52 am
While Disney’s Alice was overly bright, wandered too far from the original story, and did not fare well at first – it has fared much better over time. Being rereleased twice in the 70s and earning even more on VHS and DVD in the 80s and 90s, Alice has become a favorite character in the Disney theme parks and even has her own ride at Walt’s original theme park, Disneyland.
It is quite clear that the reputation of Alice has improved over the last thirty years. This is one of the rare films ahead of its time which was still able to gather an audience in later years.
-The Dusty One
Comment by Dustysage — February 19, 2008 @ 8:09 pm
The story is a bit outdated for today’s generation.
Comment by Selena Gomez — February 21, 2008 @ 3:22 pm
[...] another Alice for you [...]
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