Alice au pays des merveilles (1949) French (English Subs Coming Soon)

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• published: 21 Jun 2014
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Please do not repost this video anywhere without sending me a message. I bought the DVD and spent a lot of time converting it. And do not burn discs to sell them!* English subtitles will eventually be added, but we're working on another project at the moment. In 1946, Lou Bunin was approached by M. Aisner, a French screenwriter, to work on an Alice with a live action girl in a stop-motion animated Wonderland, in both French and English. Bunin loved the idea and hired Art Babbit, Bernyce Polifka, and Gene Flury to work on the film. All the shooting was done in France while the actors came from England. In 1949, the film premiered in France. However, in the States, Walt Disney was working on his own animated Alice and had worked on and off the idea since 1933. Coincidentally, Bunin's film sounds similar to one of the original concepts Disney had of a live action Alice in a traditionally animated Wonderland (I do not know if Bunin was aware of that). Disney filed a lawsuit as he thought audiences would be confused and would see the 'wrong' Alice and his company had spent more money and time on their production. However, as Alice in Wonderland was a public domain story, the court threw it out, even stating that competition should be encouraged. Disney used his influence at Technicolor to deny the best color process to the Bunin production, forcing them to use Ansco. This is why most copies of the film have discolorations and quality deterioration. Then he used his influence to discourage movie theaters from showing Bunin's film so it had a limited release. Both movies premiered the same week. This is why some ads of the Disney film at the time say "There is only ONE Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland" and why 1949 is mostly unknown in the U.S. As for the condition of the film itself: all English versions of the film on DVD are awfully edited and I believe are transferred from the VHS tape rather than film. In addition, the VHS tape might even be the version that was shown on television. There's NO way that it was the version shown in American theaters. The French DVD was transferred from film (hence the better quality) and gives the idea of what the film was intended to be. You will notice, if you are familiar with the English version, that there are major differences, especially in the live action scenes. The live action scenes were actually directed by two directors (Dallas Bower for the English and Marc Maurette for the French). In the Wonderland scenes, there are scenes in the English version not in the French and vice versa. My theory is that these once were a 'complete' film but both versions had different editing teams. I would like to put together a 'complete' version someday, but it must wait until the translation. And hopefully, the real English version will appear one day. *Yes, I've caught someone doing that before and I was outraged! I upload these online so people can experience these /for free/. I also didn't appreciate it when others reposted my 1931 video without consulting me. I /could/ put a watermark on my videos but nobody wants that so don't spoil it for everyone else.