Just as a superlative work of satire like ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ is often erroneously mistaken for a children’s book by those who’ve never read it – perhaps arising from the truncated (albeit charming) 1939 animated movie – ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ is ostensibly a children’s book with adult elements that bypass the young reader and have largely been erased from the story’s Disneyfication whenever adapted for the screen. In the Psychedelic era, however, the story’s lysergic qualities were suddenly in synch with pop culture’s peculiar evocation of lost childhood innocence and its simultaneous discovery of something nasty lurking in the nursery. Despite the fact that the most obvious musical homage to Lewis Carroll’s literary classic came from the USA – Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ – it was primarily the scene on this side of the pond that was heavily immersed in Alice’s Wonderland; and perhaps the only effective adaptation of the book to truly explore its more dark and disturbing aspects appeared on the eve of this sea-change, December 1966.
Jonathan Miller was beginning to reveal his full Renaissance Man potential in the mid-60s, despite still being known to the general public primarily as a member of the ‘Beyond the Fringe’ team; he had become active in the theatre as writer, producer and director, though the theatre then – as now – had a relatively small audience when compared to the far greater exposure afforded those who appeared on television. Miller’s first sustained association with TV came when he replaced Huw Wheldon as presenter of the BBC’s Arts series, ‘Monitor’ in 1965; Miller’s quirky style was in contrast with the more aloof old-school presentation skills of Wheldon, and Miller doubled-up as editor of the series for its final year on-air. ‘Monitor’ was noted for giving early breaks to future mainstream movie-makers like Ken Russell and John Schlesinger and also for pioneering the method of recounting an artist’s life using actors and re-enactments. It’s not too much of a stretch to see the films Miller commissioned for the series as influencing his next endeavour, to produce and direct a film of his own.
He chose to adapt ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and to liberate it from the Disney canon it had been absorbed into ever since Uncle Walt produced his animated version in 1951; Miller sought to recapture the haunting horror the book induced in him as a child, perhaps provoked by the celebrated – if often creepy – original illustrations by John Tenniel. One of the reasons he achieved his aim was due to the stunning monochrome cinematography that contributes a great deal to the eerie ambience of the piece; the fact he also shot it on 35mm film gives it a European Art House sheen far more cinematic that many TV productions shot on grainier 16mm film by the BBC in the 60s. Miller struck gold with his locations too, filming the interiors in an abandoned military hospital near Southampton that was demolished shortly afterwards. The decaying Victorian Gothic grandeur of the place seems the ideal setting for some of the oddball eccentrics that populate the story, not to mention the more sinister characters.
With a musician as chic to the mid-60s as Ravi Shankar the inspired choice for providing the film with a soundtrack that adds to its hazy, dreamlike atmosphere, it was fitting that the lead was played by 13-year-old Anne-Marie Mallik, a child actress with exotic Anglo-Indian heritage. The fact that such a prestigious role failed to entice her into an acting career and she largely disappeared off the radar thereafter seems to add to the unique mystique she radiates in the film. Although her performance was criticised by some at the time, Mallik perfectly captures the sullen, sulky indifference to the adults around her characteristic of immediate post-pubescence adolescence; and as some have long regarded the story as a metaphor for the changes girls on the cusp of womanhood experience, the way in which Mallik wanders through Wonderland with a bored, disinterested air seems entirely in keeping with her age. After all, she’s hardly presented with an encouraging preview of the life that awaits her when she encounters the apparently insane grownups inhabiting the strange, nightmarish mirror image of the Victorian society we see her as already jaded with; the aimless afternoon stroll through the long grass with her sister that opens Alice’s adventure appears to be preparing her for a dull future as a middle-class wife with too much time on her hands and nothing to occupy them. It’s no wonder she dozes off when she and her sister sit down, and it takes the startling sight of a neurotic-looking figure dashing towards his unknown destination to rouse her from her soporific indolence; it would need to be something like the White Rabbit.
It is this anticipated first sighting of the character that heralds the start of Alice’s journey, yet the viewer is made aware that this is no ordinary adaptation of the story from the off by the fact Wilfrid Brambell isn’t wearing an animal head – in fact, none of Wonderland residents are. ‘Once you take the animal heads off, you begin to see what it’s all about,’ said Miller when quizzed about his novel decision. ‘A small child, surrounded by hurrying, worried people, thinking “Is that what being grownup is like?”’ The absence of this traditional element of the adventure enables the impressive roster of actors Miller assembled for the film to play their parts ‘naked’ as it were, no longer able to hide behind their costumes; and they deliver. Michael Redgrave is the Caterpillar, Peter Cook the Mad Hatter; another of Miller’s ‘Beyond the Fringe’ colleagues, Alan Bennett, plays the mouse. Peter Sellers is the King of Hearts, John Gielgud the Mock Turtle (ably assisted by none other than Malcolm Muggeridge as the Gryphon), Leo McKern is the Ugly Duchess, and Michael Gough the March Hare. In another stroke of genius, the Cheshire Cat is a real moggy.
Alice rarely opens her mouth in this interpretation; instead, we mainly eavesdrop upon her random thoughts as she struggles to adapt to the odd mannerisms and behaviour of the characters she encounters – as well as the unnerving, intimidating world they appear entirely at home in. This brilliantly echoes the confused response of any child experiencing a wholly grownup environment for the first time. Indeed, there were segments that reminded me of the first funeral I ever attended; I was barely 16 and entered an arena so familiar to the exclusively adult company I found myself in that I watched slightly detached as they went through the routine on autopilot, knowing precisely what to do and what to say. That strange December morning as my paternal grandmother was laid to rest, I was Alice and they were all the Mad Hatter or the Queen of Hearts.
The courtroom climax of the story is a delightfully farcical satire of not merely the theatre of justice as viewed in all its beguiling and baffling ritual through the layman’s eyes, but of the perplexing ceremonial frivolity staged in the House of Lords, the employment of which always seems deliberately designed to keep a distance between the ruling class and the proles. In some respects, it’s not unlike the way in which teenage tribes use indecipherable slang to exclude adults from their enclosed clique; whether tossing about Latin phrases that only a certain kind of education can translate or babbling away in the latest adolescent Nadsat, the maintenance of an Us and a Them was (and remains) pivotal to the structure of any hierarchical society, especially the society Carroll was wryly poking fun at. His ingenious, playful manipulation of the English language throughout the story is one of its charms, and despite Miller’s version being a visual delight, the rhythm of speech integral to the satirical aspects of the book is very much intact in the dialogue.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an adaptation of the book that quite captures the essence of what makes it such a timeless tale. Jonathan Miller went on to direct and produce another one-off classic two years later when he memorably adapted MR James’ chilling ‘Whistle and I’ll Come to You’ for the BBC. What a shame he had his talented fingers in so many pies that he didn’t have time to add to what could’ve been an impressive TV CV as a film-maker; but at least his two wonderful contributions to the most far-reaching medium of the 60s survived the purge that decimated so much of that decade’s archive, and for that we must be thankful.
© The Editor
Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?fan_landing=true&u=56665294
Much has been made of the ‘viral video’ that has caught the music biz by surprise over the past few weeks – ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ by a hirsute, unknown and defiantly unvarnished farmer from North Virginia called Oliver Anthony. Everything about both the song he sings and the way in which it’s presented goes against the contemporary grain; indeed, it’s pure no-frills, soulful simplicity itself. What you have is a big strapping lad playing a guitar on his shabby homestead, in possession of a bowel-shaking voice that seems to emerge from the depths of the barren soil he no doubt ploughs; it has an instant effect upon the famed hairs situated on the back of the listener’s neck, for his self-penned number is a bona-fide protest song from a demographic that feels left behind, terminally-exploited, and held in complete contempt by the ruling class. In a folk tradition that makes it sound like it could have been penned by Woody Guthrie nearly a century ago, ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ has moved so many so quickly because it’s entirely stripped of the synthetic processing that renders 99% of present day pop music little more than fast-food for the ears; ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ is both newer and older than the unlistenable Auto-Tuned bilge that blares out of every car stuck in a traffic jam or pollutes the telephone line of every caller permanently on hold. And that’s one of the reasons why it has had such an unprecedented impact; 14 million YT views in its first week – say no more.
It may have appeared the same year as ‘Goldfinger’, but ‘Ring of Spies’ is a gritty espionage thriller rooted far more in fact than in fiction; it dramatises the Portland Spy Ring that had been exposed in 1961, and was actually filmed that year – albeit held back from release until 1964 due to legal reasons. It stars Bernard Lee (M of 007 fame) as Henry Houghton, something of a liability as an embassy attaché in Warsaw; his superiors see his socially embarrassing drunken episodes as what make him a liability, unaware a Polish girl with connections at the Russian Embassy is his most intimate confidant. Therefore, he is posted to a top-secret Royal Navy facility at Portland whereupon he is approached by a KGB agent and persuaded to pass on various sensitive documents. He secures the assistance and co-operation of Ethel Gee, a Portland employee he becomes romantically involved with, and she turns a blind eye to their treasonous activities due to her enjoyment of the handsome payments he receives. Motivated by greed rather than ideology, Houghton’s big spending soon attracts the attention of MI5 and he is placed under surveillance. Eventually, he and Gee are seized along with Houghton’s handler and another couple who transmitted information passed on by the KGB man to Moscow. An Old Bailey trial follows, at which the five receive sentences of between 15 to 25 years.
A year that is beginning to rival 2016 in terms of a relentless catalogue of household names biting the dust, 2023 now has claimed yet another figure who made his mark in the century we’re gradually (not to say sadly) slipping further away from, chat show supremo Michael Parkinson. To conk out at 88 is – as the cricketer in him would no doubt have said – a good innings, but the television landscape he once bestrode with a gruff, plain-speaking intelligence passed away long before that most professional of Yorkshiremen left the crease. Despite several revivals from the 90s onwards, the golden age of the ‘Parkinson’ show was its first 11 years (1971-82) when it was as pivotal a fixture of the Saturday evening experience as the show it always followed last thing at night, ‘Match of the Day’. From contemporary pop culture characters like John Lennon to Hollywood legends free to spill the beans now they were no longer bound and gagged by the studio system, ‘Parkinson’ could provoke thought as well as laughter and largely modelled itself on the format of Dick Cavett’s US chat show, where the host wasn’t a gag man ala Johnny Carson (who asked questions solely so he could deliver a punch-line).
A post I wrote during Lockdown Mk I that I revisited the other day predicted which alterations to pre-pandemic routine would personally remain in the distant event of Covid being perceived as less of a threat than it was in 2020; one I singled out was the self-service tills in Sainsbury’s, which I’d never used up to that point. In this particular case, the prediction proved accurate, though the temporary freeze on cash exchanges that the coronavirus panic brought into force seems to have left a legacy in itself. Although Her (late) Majesty still smiles benignly from the Bank of England bank-notes, she’s the sole survivor from life before currency was tracked, traced and digitised for our own good. Out of the twelve newly-refurbished self-service tills in my local branch of said supermarket, just three are now reserved for physical cash – and one of them is usually out of order. Moreover, when taking a shopping detour via the neighbouring Waitrose a few days earlier, I was asked at the check-out which method I would be employing to pay for my goods; my reply of ‘cash’ provoked a swift donning of surgical gloves by the girl on the till, just to emphasise how disgustingly 20th century I really was. Sometimes it’s hard not to conclude we’re all being forcibly shoved into the cashless society, whether we like it or not.
The most memorable episode in the climax to one of Dickens’ masterpieces, ‘Little Dorrit’ concerns the literal collapse of the house occupied by the invalid Mrs Clennam, which comes tumbling down in her absence whilst killing the villain of the novel, the blackmailing Blandois. Whilst many today might regard this as Dickens taking artistic licence for dramatic effect, the fact is it was not uncommon for residences to simply fall down in the 18th and 19th centuries – indeed, Dr Johnson once referred to such incidents when describing the sights and sounds of London. Moreover, any cursory study of early photographs chronicling the notoriously shabby slums of the capital leaves the viewer coming to the conclusion that, were these shoddy hovels not packed so closely together, collapse would probably not take much in the way of effort. In the centuries since, improved planning regulations make this kind of spectacle something of a rarity, though the partial collapse of one building constructed during a less-regulated era inadvertently created the nearest thing the West Midlands ever had to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Crooked House pub near Dudley in Staffordshire.
I recently picked-up a book on eBay called ‘The Real Coronation Street’ – published in 1970, on the eve of the programme’s 10th anniversary and retailing for the princely sum of 25p (with 5s in brackets, reflecting imminent decimalisation). The paperback was penned by the then-TV critic for the Daily Mirror, Ken Irwin; I don’t know if this intriguing little book ever went into a second print-run, but I doubt it. However, the fact it’s been out of print for over half-a-century probably means most of those who have written the numerous celebratory volumes on the show ever since are unaware of it, and perhaps some of the details on the original cast housed within its yellowing pages have never subsequently seen the light of day. For example, I had no previous knowledge of the fact that the actress Christine Hargreaves – who played troubled character Christine Hardman for the first few years of the programme – was (at the time of the book’s publication) married to Klaus Voormann; pop scholars amongst you will know him as the old Hamburg associate of The Beatles, both a gifted artist (responsible for the iconic ‘Revolver’ sleeve) and musician (that’s his bass at the beginning of Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’). Such fascinating snippets tend to slip back into obscurity if they don’t re-emerge in print thereafter, so a book like this can often be a little goldmine of pop cultural information if excavated.
A sense of entitlement has long been a traditional Tory trait, usually imbued at a young age by attending public schools which emphasise the ‘born to rule’ maxim; ex-Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries wasn’t saddled with such a social handicap as a child – being of working-class Scouse stock – though her recent tantrum over Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list suggests that even if Tories aren’t exposed to this delusion at a tender age they can easily become infected with it if they scale the upper echelons of the Party. Dorries’ own sense of entitlement was manifested as an expectation that her being one of Boris’s most prominent ass-kissers both before and after his tenure at No.10 would naturally result in her receiving an elevation to the Peerage upon his reluctant retirement as PM; however, wary of triggering yet another by-election following a string of them, Boris declined to promote his most devoted groupie. So upset was Dorries that all her tireless butt-licking wasn’t rewarded with a free pass into Britain’s cushiest care home, she abruptly announced her intention to resign her Mid Bedfordshire seat with immediate effect, thus triggering a by-election after all.
winegumtelegram 