Remembering Alice!

 

Alice in Wonderland  

Released this week in 1951

A couple of interesting things to note for this week, Walt Disney released "Alice in Wonderland on July 26, 1951 in London.  The subsequent release in the US occurred just days later on July 28, 1951 in New York city with the rest of US seeing the film even later in September.  Unfortunately, the film did not do well initially at the box office due to a number of reasons, ranging from perceived complicated plot lines, poor adaptation of the book to film and the general public sentiment at the time.  As result of this, Disney later released the film on Television more widely in the US.  I did not previously know this about the film.  Alice in Wonderland was never fully re-released in theaters in the US until well after Walt's passing in 1974.  It did very well and was subsequently released again in theaters in 1981.

I have always liked the film and in particular the whimsical characters from the various stories and subplots.  I think they lent themselves really well to animation and I love the way Disney made the stories less complicated and more fun in my opinion.  I was ultimately inspired by Disney's film to acquire an original book released at the time of Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Dodson) and to read the original story in the same format as a child would have around 1872.  I had never read the books prior to this and enjoyed the experience.  More on that at another time.

Much later into my animation art collecting, I decided it would be fun to collect cels of some of the whimsical characters.   The very first of which I acquired was a cel of the dog-e-pillar and cat-e-pillar.  I love this simple cel setup as it displays a moment from the "Golden Afternoon" sequence.  You can read a bit more about this cel on previous posting I made in June of 2013. 

Also, If you haven't already discovered, there is wonderful book I just received this summer that showcases artwork from Alice in Wonderland.  Published out of France by Huginn & Muninn in collaboration with Disney and authored by Pierre Lambert, "Alice au Pays des Merveilles" is wonderful coffee-table book beautifully displaying artwork created during the production process for the film.  While not as lavishly printed as Pierre Lambert's earlier books on Sleeping Beauty or Jungle Book, it is still an edition worthy of every animation library.  With over 200 pages from cover to cover, this hardbound edition showcases everything from production drawings, key master setups to concept artwork.  I highly recommend acquiring this book.

 

 

After spending a few hours revelling in the pages of this beautiful book, I was very happy to discover the production background that matches my dog-e-pillar & cat-e-pillar cel setup on page 113.  What a nice surprise!