Wonderland Wednesday - Alice in Wonderland - The Silent Films - Every Version Ever Podcast

Welcome back to Wonderland Wednesday! As well as to the very first episode of Every Version Ever! Today I am joined by my cousin Sarah, and we're talking about five different early silent films, all adapting the story of Alice in Wonderland in a wide variety of ways!

If you want to watch any of the videos we mention in the show, check out the links below.

1903 version from BFI

1910 version from Curiouser & Curiouser

1915 version with partially missing “Looking Glass” segment from Phantomwise

1927 version with information from the Kitsap Forest Theater

1931 version with information and links from the Kitsap Forest Theater and University of Washington.

Our previous reviews of these films:

Check out Every Version Ever on Anchor!

Check out I Heart Movies on Anchor & iTunes!
Full list of available podcast platforms on Anchor!

Find me on social media!

If you'd like to help out the show, you can find me on Patreon!

[Phantomwise]

Thanks for the shoutouts! Curiouser and Curiouser and I were originally friends/partners-in-collecting, though now he's my boyfriend. Funnily, we met through 1931!

Curiouser (Sam) actually found the plays.
Lol! The horrible silent spin-off sounds hilarious!
I don't read Alice every night, I have it memorized. ;) jk, though I know enough to confirm Looking-Glass does end with "Life, what is it, but a dream?" Anyway, following I address some things y'all said regarding 1910 and 1915.

*1910*
To clarify, it was done by entirely by email and besides from paying for it and doing some contrast and stabilization, there wasn't much we had to do. The difference between the two versions was completely how it was transferred.

My old video came from David Schaefer's video collection when it was released as a DVD exclusive by the LCSNA (with one clip hand-filmed by me, lol). Without getting into the complexities of film, the only (known) surviving copies are an unusual home media 22mm format called Edison Kinetoscope that required a special projector to play. Because of it's unusual 3-row arrangement, it was impossible to transfer using normal equipment (and why it was "lost" for so long). I believe Schaefer may have borrowed a Kinetoscope projector and then recorded the projection. As an older man, he was not very tech-savvy so it's possible it could have looked better but he had saved it in a low-resolution. We asked Schaefer to consider releasing 1910 and his 1915 on DVD, which he did, but bizarrely, a clip was missing (I had sneakily recorded it during his NYC screening so we had something)! Perhaps we could have contacted him or LCSNA for a full file, but Sam had started thinking of asking the Library of Congress anyway.

Instead of filming a projection, Library of Congress used specially-made equipment to optically transfer the 22mm Kinetoscope to standard 35mm and then transferring that, which is why it looks so much better. It's the best we can get, short of scanning each frame individually.

*1915*
The rarer clips in my video also came from Schaefer's video collection and his non-tech-savviness is why the Rabbit-Hole looks bad. But yes, there were definitely a lot of cuts throughout the years. It's possible that the special effects were cut because they became severely outdated. You're right on the money that the Rabbit's house is incomplete; we definitely know something happened with Alice inside. Possibly, she "grew." We do have a picture which basically has her sitting next to the little vanity up there, which may be the extent of her being "stuck." If so, we can imagine how unimpressive it was. You're also right that the walruses were originally for the Walrus and the Carpenter, we do have a picture of that scene. I'm not too sure about the hard numbers on the budget, but I can tell you that the producer Macauley essentially went bankrupt while making it. He was using the money from his well-paying job as a newspaper cartoonist to finance it when he was unfairly dismissed. He later went to court, who agreed he was unfairly dismissed. This Alice was brought up in the trial. Anyway, he had to sell Alice off to make ends meet which is why it was immediately mishandled by distributors.

We have confirmed that Looking-Glass is not lost! There's a copy of it in a film archive! Also of interest is that their Wonderland is credited as being directed by Martin J. Faust (who was erroneously credited as the director in the original release). After learning of our interest, the silent film expert of the archive suggested looking into a restoration of the full film! This would not only include transferring their copies of Looking-Glass and Wonderland, but working with other archives to transfer their copies! This will cost literally thousands though so we hope to crowdfund. Of course though, crowdfunding will have to wait until people have spending money again. Ideally, I'd love enough to transfer everything and maybe commission someone to compose a score, but we've all agreed the most important priority will be transferring Looking-Glass if we can't raise funds for the whole project.