Film: Jan Švankmajer’s Alice [Něco z Alenky], 1988

Thursday, December 3, 2015
7 pm | Ring Auditorium

The Czech filmmaker’s first feature, a dark fantasy that takes “something from Alice,” is very different in spirit from both Lewis Carroll’s fairy tale and the popular Disney adaptation. Mixing stop-motion animation with live action, this distinctive masterwork brings to mind the treatment of dolls in works by Ruth Bernhard and Hans Bellmer that are on view in Marvelous Objects: Surrealist Sculpture from Paris to New York. Švankmajer’s heroine is little but also a little vicious. A quasi-Freudian overtone prevails, and, in the end, it is unclear if Alice is back in the real world or trapped in an eerie Wonderland. 84 minutes.