Alice in Wonderland

Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske worked from a story reel the studio finished in 1939 and shelved; serious production restarted only in June 1947. What those years removed was mostly talk: the Mock Turtle, the Gryphon, the Duchess and Humpty Dumpty all went, the last because the studio judged him too talky. The talking Doorknob at the start is not in Carroll; it was invented to avoid opening on a long explanatory monologue. The film turns its own exposition into a character, then ends each episode the moment its joke is done. The Mad Hatter sounds unusually loose for a technical reason: part of what you hear from Ed Wynn is the crude live-action reference recording made for the animators, kept because his later studio reading was not as good. Tweedledee and Tweedledum come from Through the Looking-Glass, not the first book. Its only Academy Award recognition was a nomination for scoring a musical picture. Walt Disney blamed the failure on Alice having no heart and on too many characters, and on 3 November 1954 it became the first of his animated features shown on television. A good fit if a run of self-contained turns, each with its own rules, is what you want. Not for you if you expect Alice to drive the journey herself.