It is a performances centric movie

Film Perfection

As Good As It Gets

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Catching this film on Turner Classic Movies with host Robert Osborne and writer James Curtis offered illuminating insight into the way the picture was made. Screenwriter William Cameron Menzies insisted that every scene be illustrated prior to filming and the drawings became part of the screenplay. The process resulted in a seven pound script that's still intact, as Osborne thumbed through some of the pages to show the viewing audience. It was a laborious process and was never attempted again by Menzies due to it's time consuming nature and the frustration it caused with the actors playing the characters, they had to hunt for their dialog.Seeing this movie for the first time the other day I was surprised how closely it resembled "The Wizard of Oz" in it's execution; you don't really get a sense of it reading the books by Lewis Carroll. There's Alice of course, wonderfully portrayed by the capable Charlotte Henry, perhaps a sweeter version of Judy Garland's Dorothy. The White Knight (Gary Cooper) struck me as an early version of the Tin Man. It was difficult if not impossible to note the individual players in their costumes, the film was one of the first to employ rubber masks, some of which looked rather charming but others notably grotesque. It took me a while to be convinced that was Gary Cooper in the Mock Turtle get up, that was just very strange. Oddly, W.C. Fields made an excellent point about un-birthdays as Humpty Dumpty, it would behoove parents to distract your kids during this scene or you could wind up buying them presents every day.While watching the movie I began wondering why it's not better known or regarded and that question was answered as well by the hosts. Apparently Paramount Pictures, with the inclusion of so many of it's star players at the time, determined they wanted to treat this picture as a special, thereby releasing it for only a single week prior to Christmas of 1933. After that the film sort of sat in hibernation for a long time, and even now this is the first time I've seen it offered on any of the cable stations. At times the picture may be just a bit harsh for youngsters, but as a whimsical fantasy I think every film buff ought to give it a try at least once.

This movie is almost legendary, with an alleged star studded cast of people who actually weren't quite stars. We had seen bits and pieces over the years, but never watched it from the beginning until it was on TV recently. The sad fact is, it's not nearly as good as it should be. Movies were supposedly entering into their golden age at this point, but maybe they weren't quite there yet in 1933. This version of Lewis Carroll's immortal tale is dull and leaden, without magic and without an ounce of charm. It starts out with an invented character, a sour-faced old aunt who sets the dark, scolding tone. Alice falls asleep and goes not only through the looking glass but also down the rabbit hole in a confusing set of sequences. Someone thought it was a good idea to try to replicate the famous John Tenniel illustrations from the book, resulting in a lot of grotesque, amateurish looking papier-mâché heads covering up all the characters. The tone shifts throughout, with stylized creatures like the frog and the fish mixed in with real life ducks. Scenes come and go in a hodgepodge, none of them very funny or light of touch. We wanted this to be better from beginning to end, but alas. Nobody has ever really captured "Alice in Wonderland" correctly except for Lewis Carroll himself.

A friend of mine had a wife (now deceased) who was obsessed with taping large blocks of oldies from TCM. I've inherited those tapes and watch them while I add items online for my used bookshop. It was a nice surprise to find this again; I really think I was younger than 20 the last time I saw this (I'm 62 now) , and I'm not even sure I saw it all the way thru at the time. Thank God for the credits/intro of the characters; I'm sure someone at Paramount insisted on it after a preview; you'd never know who was who without it. I have no way of knowing if all these actors are 'hot' in '33. I watch a ton of oldies and a lot of the names just flew by without registering. Charlotte Henry was great; not knowing her film career, I wasn't able to tell her age at all, so it felt a little weird being a bit attracted to her; glad now to know she was all of 20 during filming ! The oddball way they stretched her to shrink her and scale her didn't do it for me; then they did it right once with a perfect 'small-ify' Also impressed (I laughed in wonderment) when she got herself skeddaddled down some stairs, around a corner and right out an open door ! I'm not sure 'Alice' should ever BE a movie; the events and people go by too fast and it all plays like a nightmare you have after a hot Latin meal... Some makeups seem more like a slathering of lemon meringue pie than a mask; the faces slide around in them with only the eyes changing. I stopped with my head in my upturned palms to stare hard only three times, W.C.Fields, Cary Grant and Gary Cooper. Fields to try and figure if it really was him I was seeing, Grant to try and figure out if it was really him I was hearing, and Cooper because his character was the best portrayal ! The only character to seem to care for Alice, he was funny, gentle, and oh, all those falls ! Louise Fazenda was sexually alluring as the White Queen, I wanted her to take the fake nose off so I could better enjoy her... I was a fun 77 minutes. I wonder what they cut from the original 90 ?

In the depths of the Great Depression, Paramount mounted this spectacular fantasy with a galaxy of top flight stars and just missed creating a classic. Like the stage ALICE IN WONDERLAND Eva LeGallienne had mounted the year before at her Civic Repertory Theatre in New York - only just closed when the film opened - which appears to have inspired this production, the sets and costumes are drawn heavily from the classic and by then in public domain illustrations from the original book by John Tenniel.The result is a dazzling world - starting with Alice's Victorian drawing room where she is waiting out a snow storm with her cat, Dinah and her aunt before beginning her explorations Through the Looking Glass (the film combines both of Lewis Carroll's most famous books) and continuing through most of the most famous incidents from the books in live action fantasy form. Only "The Walrus and The Carpenter," delightfully rendered by Max Fleischer's cartoon studio (one would love to have seen the cut footage of the similarly popular "You Are Old Father William" poem!) was deemed too hard to portray with live actors - the baby oysters lured from their bed for culinary conversation - "Shoes and ships and sealing wax" and all that. You've probably seen this cartoon edited from the film and issued separately! This was a separate Hollywood production, despite similarities with the Broadway play with music, and didn't use the any of that show's Richard Addinsell song score (recorded by RCA during the stage show's 1947 revival) but turned Dimitri Tiomkin loose on it, and it's nice to see that film's premiere composer could also turn out a nice enough song or two too. This was a first class production all the way - and like MGM's WIZARD OF OZ six years later, didn't make money in it's initial release - or initial RE-release in 1935. Lacking ...OZ's Technicolor and popular song score, this ALICE IN WONDERLAND didn't even carve out its classic niche when television came in, and is now almost lost - supplanted in the popular mind by the fine 1951 Disney animated version of the story, but is well worth seeking out for lovers of Lewis Carroll, classic fantasy or classic film.Technicolor or not, songs or not, the film still has elements which dazzle and only a few serious drawbacks for the "short attention span" set. Charlotte Henry is a fine, natural Alice (in an all too brief career of only 31 films, before retiring during WWII, she also did the Laurel & Hardy BABES IN TOYALAND in 1934 and the best of all the Chans, CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA in 1936 as Boris Karloff's daughter!) and she is ably supported by a cast of great actors - not all of whom have the luxury of costumes revealing their faces like Ned Sparks' Caterpillar, Edward Everett Horton's Mad Hatter or Edna May Oliver's Red Queen, but the voices of rising stars like Cary Grant (a wonderful singing Mock Turtle) and old pro W.C. Fields (Humpty Dumpty) won't really require seeing the faces in their "Tenniel come-to-life" costumes.The problem, if any, comes in the mad whirl of crazy fantasy that takes Alice deeper and deeper into Wonderland (and its sequel) and after a while can lose the audience's interest as they try clinging to a thru-story line. Stick around though, for Gary Cooper's appearance around an hour into the film as The White Knight (only the name is type casting)! It is one of the greatest treats in a motion picture packed with them - and arguably one of the crowning gems of Cooper's career. Quite wonderful.Modern audiences may cringe a bit in the opening scene seeing Alice, in a highly starched - and highly FLAMMABLE - dress and apron climbing on the grate in front of a burning fireplace to look in the mirror over the hearth, but someone at the studio did notice (and probably hoped the audience wouldn't). When Alice returns, the fire is out. After 75 years though, the fire is far from out on this fascinating extravaganza. If you get a chance to see it, grab it.