![]() ![]() (To be fair, this sentiment is in keeping with Lewis Carroll's original books.) Alice is beautifully voiced by Kathryn Beaumont (who did a similarly excellent job as the voice of Wendy in "Peter Pan" a few years after.) The real appeal of Alice here is that unlike many other Disney heroines,Kathryn Beaumont was a young girl when she recorded the voice and therefore, Alice looks and sounds like a girl of a certain age. This film has a subversiveness that may have been unintentional in showing how the world of adults, with its rules and logic, can be purely nonsense and that a child can be the only sane person in the lot. Who among us hasn't been very frustrated that Cinderella just took all the abuse from her stepmother and sisters and was powerless? Alice, on the other hand, is not one of the "shy little violets" and operates on more than just one emotion she gets mad, befuddled, disgusted, amused, angry and, best of all, she stands up to adults (how odd for the 50's) and tells them when they are being ridiculous. Unlike Cinderella or Snow White, Alice has a lot of personality. I don't find this film chilly, I find it refreshingly free of sentiment or cliche that can often weigh down other Disney films. Many books on the subject of Disney's animated films will often only devote a paragraph or two to the film, and in that short paragraph it will invariably mention how "Alice" was a financial flop, how Walt Disney himself wasn't very fond of it, how it's a chilly film. Unfortunately, this film has always been one of the most maligned in the Disney canon. Right from the stunning (hand drawn!) opening sweep of a verdant riverbank on a lazy summer's day, "Alice in Wonderland" is one of the most beautifully animated of the Disney films of the 1950s. ![]()
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