Once lost, this 8‑minute, very dam­aged, but very delight­ful silent ver­sion of Alice in Won­der­land was restored sev­er­al years ago by the British Film Insti­tute. It is the first film adap­ta­tion of the 1865 Lewis Car­roll clas­sic. And, at the time, the orig­i­nal length of 12 min­utes (only 8 min­utes sur­vive today) made it the longest film com­ing out of the nascent British film indus­try.

After about a minute, the eye ignores the dam­age of the film, like the ear ignores a scratched 78 rpm record. View­ers can expect sev­er­al vignettes from the nov­el, not a flow­ing nar­ra­tive. It starts with Alice fol­low­ing the White Rab­bit down the hole, the “eat me” and “drink me” sequence, the squeal­ing baby that turns into a piglet, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Tea Par­ty, and the Red Queen and her play­ing card min­ions. The col­or­ing of the neg­a­tive is a BFI recon­struc­tion of the orig­i­nal col­ors, by the way.

The film was pro­duced and direct­ed by Cecil Hep­worth and Per­cy Stow out of their Hep­worth Stu­dios in Wal­ton-on-the-Thames, near Lon­don. They show knowl­edge of the cam­era trick­ery pio­neered only a few years ear­li­er by Georges Méliès, like the shrink­ing and grow­ing Alice and the appear­ance of the Cheshire Cat. That cat, by the way, was the Hepworth’s fam­i­ly pet. Hep­worth him­self plays the frog-head­ed foot­man, and his wife played the Red Queen.

May Clark, who played Alice, was 18 at the time, and had already worked on sev­er­al Hep­worth pro­duc­tions, and not just act­ing. Accord­ing to her bio at the Women Film Pio­neers project, she did a bit of every­thing around the stu­dio, “from spe­cial effects and set dec­o­ra­tion to cos­tume design and car­pen­try.” The ear­ly days of film have a real “stu­dent project” feel about them, no pigeon­holed roles, just every­body chip­ping in.

As for Cecil Hep­worth, he appeared des­tined for a career in film, as his father ran mag­ic lantern shows. Cecil worked for sev­er­al com­pa­nies before set­ting up his own and wrote one of the first books on the sub­ject, Ani­mat­ed Pho­tog­ra­phy: The ABC of the Cin­e­mato­graph. His com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to make films in this ear­ly style through 1926, but even­tu­al­ly ran out of mon­ey. To pay off debts, the receiver­ship com­pa­ny melt­ed down his films to get the sil­ver, which was the rea­son most schol­ars thought his films were lost. In 2008, one of his films was dis­cov­ered, and then “Alice.” There may still be oth­ers out there.

You can find Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land list­ed in our oth­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lewis Carroll’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Told in Sand Ani­ma­tion

Curi­ous Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Won­der­land That Made Drugs Look Like Fun

The Orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Wes Ander­son has been mak­ing fea­ture films for 27 years now, and in that time his work has grown more tem­po­ral­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly spe­cif­ic. Though shot in his native Texas in the late nine­teen-nineties, his break­out pic­ture Rush­more seemed to take place in no one part of the Unit­ed States — and even more strik­ing­ly, no one iden­ti­fi­able era. Few film­go­ers had seen any­thing like Ander­son­’s clean-edged retro sen­si­bil­i­ty before, and in sub­se­quent projects like The Roy­al Tenen­baums and The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou, it inten­si­fied con­sid­er­ably. Then, in 2012, came Moon­rise King­dom, which took the Ander­son­ian aes­thet­ic to a par­tic­u­lar time and place: New Eng­land in the fall of 1965.

Since then, Ander­son and his col­lab­o­ra­tors have told sto­ries in their dis­tinc­tive visions of East­ern Europe, Japan, and France — but always, explic­it­ly or implic­it­ly, in one peri­od or anoth­er of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Judg­ing by its new­ly released trail­er, the events of Ander­son­’s next film Aster­oid City occur in per­haps the most mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry year imag­in­able, 1955, and in small-town Amer­i­ca at that.

Or rather, very small-town Amer­i­ca: Aster­oid City itself appears to be locat­ed in the mid­dle of the Ari­zona desert (though shot in Spain, in keep­ing with Ander­son­’s increas­ing­ly Europe-ori­ent­ed pro­duc­tion habits), and with noth­ing more excit­ing going on — apart from the occa­sion­al dis­tant nuclear-weapons test — than an annu­al “junior stargaz­er com­pe­ti­tion.”

The film “tells the sto­ry of a belea­guered wid­ow­er (Jason Schwartz­man) who’s busy schlep­ping his four chil­dren across the coun­try to see their grand­fa­ther (Tom Han­ks) when their car sud­den­ly breaks down,” writes The Verge’s Charles Pul­liam-More. This strands the fam­i­ly in the tit­u­lar town, with its “strange earth­quakes that no one knows the true cause of, fears about whether aliens might be lurk­ing among the humans liv­ing in Aster­oid City, and mul­ti­ple sight­ings of a celebri­ty (Scar­lett Johans­son).” As fans can already guess from this sum­ma­ry, the ensem­ble cast includes more than a few Ander­son reg­u­lars, also includ­ing Edward Nor­ton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Gold­blum, and Bob Bal­a­ban. A case of COVID-19 kept Bill Mur­ray from par­tic­i­pat­ing, but even so, nobody who sees the trail­er can doubt that the view­ing expe­ri­ence of Aster­oid City will be high­ly Ander­son­ian indeed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wes Ander­son Explains How He Writes and Directs Movies, and What Goes Into His Dis­tinc­tive Film­mak­ing Style

Why Do Wes Ander­son Movies Look Like That?

Wes Anderson’s Shorts Films & Com­mer­cials: A Playlist of 8 Short Ander­son­ian Works

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

Wes Anderson’s Break­through Film, Rush­more, Revis­it­ed in Five Video Essays: It Came Out 20 Years Ago Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

No French film of this cen­tu­ry is more beloved than Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie. Or rather, no pro­tag­o­nist of a French film in this cen­tu­ry is more beloved than Audrey Tautou’s epony­mous Amélie. Hence, no doubt, why the movie is best known by that short ver­sion of its title rather than by the long ver­sion, Le fab­uleux des­tin d’Amélie Poulain. Now, more than twen­ty years after the release of Le fab­uleux des­tin d’Amélie Poulain, Jeunet has fol­lowed it up with La véri­ta­ble his­toire d’Amélie Poulain, which you can watch (with option­al French or Eng­lish sub­ti­tles) just above.

“After all this time,” Jeunet says in a brief intro­duc­tion, “I felt the moment was right to tell you, at long last, the real sto­ry of Amélie Poulain.” She turns out, accord­ing to his voice-over nar­ra­tion that fol­lows, not to be a sim­ple Mont­martre wait­ress who ded­i­cates her­self to sur­rep­ti­tious­ly enrich­ing the lives of those around her.

In fact she works as a spy for the KGB, hav­ing first been recruit­ed in child­hood with the promise of can­dy bars. That may sound far-fetched, but Jeunet sup­ports every detail of Amélie’s dou­ble life, and of the sto­ry of her re-entry into espi­onage after the fall of the Berlin Wall, using the very same scenes and involv­ing the very same char­ac­ters we remem­ber from Amélie.

On one lev­el, La véri­ta­ble his­toire d’Amélie Poulain tes­ti­fies to the endur­ing play­ful­ness that keeps Jeunet from tak­ing his own work — even the work that became a glob­al phe­nom­e­non — too seri­ous­ly. (Indeed, that spir­it is on dis­play in the orig­i­nal movie’s exag­ger­a­tion of whim­si­cal-French-film tropes.) Much like the Hol­ly­wood­i­fied Kubrick trail­ers we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, this new short also con­sti­tutes a demon­stra­tion of how the mean­ing and impact of cin­e­ma are cre­at­ed not by the images them­selves, but rather by their con­text and jux­ta­po­si­tion. And so, with char­ac­ter­is­tic clev­er­ness, Jeunet has rein­vent­ed Amélie as a Sovi­et agent by employ­ing the prin­ci­ples of Sovi­et mon­tage.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Paris Through Pen­tax: Short Film Lets You See a Great City Through a Dif­fer­ent Lens

Tui­leries: The Coen Broth­ers’ Short Film About Steve Buscemi’s Very Bad Day in the Paris Metro

A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Paris, As Seen Through the Lens of Leg­endary Film­mak­er Éric Rohmer: Watch Rohmer in Paris

How to Jump the Paris Metro: A Wit­ty, Rebel­lious Primer from New Wave Direc­tor Luc Moul­let (1984)

His­to­ry Declas­si­fied: New Archive Reveals Once-Secret Doc­u­ments from World Gov­ern­ments

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.