Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
About Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Edison’s one-reel Alice, with Gladys Hulette, runs the White Rabbit, the shrinking and growing, the garden, the Duchess’s house, the Cheshire Cat, the mad tea party, a topiary garden, and the Queen of Hearts’ trial into about ten minutes. Carroll’s prose is not there. The costumes and creatures follow John Tenniel’s drawings. Yale Boss is also billed.
Cast & crew
More about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Edwin S. Porter directed. Edison released it on 9 September 1910. It is one reel, about 10 minutes, black and white, silent. Hulette plays Alice. The source is Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book. Variety compared it favorably with the imported fantasy films then playing in American houses.
Themes
Making
Porter compresses the book instead of picking one chapter. What will not fit in ten minutes, and what cannot be said without Carroll’s sentences, is simply left out.
Reviews
Variety set the Edison reel next to the foreign fantasy films then filling American programs and preferred this one.
Look
The reel stages Tenniel’s figures — rabbit, cat, queen — in a series of short tableaux rather than one continuous chase.
Music
Silent, with English intertitles.
Notes
- The tea party, the Cheshire Cat, and the trial are all inside the same reel.
- Tenniel’s illustrations, not a later stage design, are the look the filmography cites.
- Variety’s compliment was a comparison with foreign fantasy pictures, not a plot review in detail.
- Boss’s part is billed. The write-ups name only Hulette’s Alice.
Scenes
- Alice changes size.
- The Cheshire Cat appears.
- The tea party.
- The Queen of Hearts holds the trial.
Influenced by
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
