| Alice through the Looking Glass | |
|---|---|
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| Based on | Through the Looking-Glass byLewis Carroll |
| Screenplay by | Nick Vivian[1] |
| Directed by | John Henderson[2] |
| Starring | Kate Beckinsale Ian Holm Siân Phillips Geoffrey Palmer |
| Theme music composer | Dominik Scherrer[1] |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Producers | Trevor Eve,[3] Simon Johnson, and Paul Frift[1] |
| Cinematography | John Ignatius[1] |
| Editor | David Yardley[1] |
| Running time | 83 minutes |
| Production companies |
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| Original release | |
| Network | Channel 4 |
| Release | 26 December 1998 (1998-12-26) |
Alice through the Looking Glass is a 1998 Britishfantasytelevision film, based onLewis Carroll's 1871 bookThrough the Looking-Glass, and starringKate Beckinsale.
The film was released onDVD in 2005.[4]
The film opens with a mother (Kate Beckinsale) readingThrough the Looking Glass to her daughter Alice (Charlotte Curley). The mother then finds herself travelling through the bedroom mirror intoLooking-Glass Land and becomingAlice, but remains an adult.[2]
Alice finds a book containing "Jabberwocky", inmirror writing, and seeschess pieces coming to life. She goes out into a garden with talking flowers. There, she meets theRed Queen from the chess board (Sian Phillips), who shows her that the landscape is laid out like a gigantic chessboard. She will make Alice a queen if she can get as far as the eighth row. Alice becomes one of theWhite Queen'spawns, and gets into a train that takes her directly to the fourth row. In a wood, the Gnat (Steve Coogan) teaches her about the looking-glass insects. In crossing the wood where things have no names, she forgets her own name, but it comes back on the other side. Next she meetsTweedledum and Tweedledee (Gary Olsen andMarc Warren), who recite the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter", with theRed King (Michael Medwin) asleep under a tree. The brothers get ready to fight but run away, frightened by a giant crow.
The White Queen (Penelope Wilton) arrives and shows her powers ofprecognition. With her, Alice goes forward into the fifth row by crossing a stream in a rowing boat, but the Queen is then turned intothe Sheep.
Alice enters the sixth row of the chess board by crossing another stream and meetsHumpty Dumpty (Desmond Barrit) on hisunbirthday, who teaches Alice aboutportmanteau words before falling off his wall. TheWhite King (Geoffrey Palmer), the king's horses, and the king's men try to help Humpty.
Alice, still a white pawn, crosses yet another stream to enter the seventh row and finds herself in the land of the Red Knight (Greg Wise), who tries to capture her, but theWhite Knight (Ian Holm) fights him off and leads her through a forest to the last stream, falling off his horse and reciting the poemHaddocks' Eyes. This stream is not much more than a ditch, and Alice can step across it into the eighth row, when a queen's crown appears on her head. She is joined by both the Red and White Queens, who useword play to baffle her. They issue invitations to a coronation party to be hosted by Alice, but the party is chaotic, and Alice finds herself shaking the Red Queen to calm her down.
Alice wakes up safe at home with her daughter, little Alice.
Apart from the innovation that Alice is played by an adult (she answers “seven and a half” when asked her age), the screenplay follows the text of the book closely, preserving Carroll's dialogue almost word for word. However, in another new element, Alice's hair style and her dress change throughout the film.[4]
Unusually, the "Wasp in a Wig" episode, which Carroll wrote but did not leave in the book as published, is included in the film, with the Wasp played byIan Richardson.[4][6]
Critics Jaques and Giddens commented that "The genial rendition overall makes for a pleasant film aimed at children, with a strong sense that Alice has a fun time in her adventure."[2] Film scholarThomas Leitch, comparingJohn Tenniel's influence on popular images of Alice with Carroll's own, comments that "The stars who least resemble Tenniel's Alice are Kate Beckinsale, ... and dark-haired, plump-facedTina Majorino inNick Willing's 1999 adaptation for NBC television."[7]
