WONDERLANDS: ALICE IN WONDERLAND, 1949

Bunin Productions' 1949 Alice in Wonderland is a version like no other, mixing live action and the stop-motion animation of Lou Bunin to re-imagine Lewis Carroll's story as a series of rather left-wing parables, with a troop of marching fish soldiers singing an anti-military marching song and the white rabbit as a rather slimy character who has schemed his way up from poverty to become a noted figure in the court of the mad Queen of Hearts.

The Disney studio was working on its own Alice movie around the same time, and they managed to get the American release of Bunin's Alice blocked for years. When the film was finally released in the US, it played in just a handful of theaters. It fared little better in Europe, where it was allegedly suppressed because the Queen of Hearts was seen as a caricature of Queen Victoria.

Bunin was blacklisted in the McCarthy witch hunts, and Alice would prove to be his only feature. His name has become rather obscure today, which is a real shame. He was a true animation pioneer, and his work has a creepy charm all its own. But his Alice is too weird and too interesting to remain forgotten forever, and in recent years the film has begun to attract a cult audience.

The clip below offers a few random sequences from the film, giving you a taste of Bunin's style.




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