(Somewhat) Cursed Alice found media: Momentous events and Channel 4's cultural documentary...

(Hetty Baynes as Alice and other actors at the tea party scene, in the TV special's first half. Image credit: IMDB)

UPDATE: Adam Groves's 2025 review states that this version was actually made for a series of TV documentaries on the USSR by famous directors, called Momentous Events, and this director got "culture" as their theme. This somewhat explains why this version is how it is, but it is still a VERY odd hour or so of TV. Also Groves finds this version charming, I admit I did not personally, but, very interesting to get another POV on this special!

This is a difficult one to talk about, sorry if I make any errors on the background. If you know more about this than me, its fine!

Channel 4 , World Vision Enterprises, and Ken Russell (yes the UK director provocateur, you can see where this is going already) made in 1995 a version of Alice that for reasons unknown, relays the history of the Soviet Union/USSR, with particular focus on Russia. 

Adam Groves notes this about the overall "Momentous Events" series:

The proposed title: MOMENTOUS EVENTS, reflecting both the massive changes occurring in the former Soviet Union. (...) Had it been completed, the $12 million MOMENTOUS EVENTS would have been the most ambitious of the lot, a six hour multi-parter with a wraparound segment set to be scripted by DERSU UZALA’s Yuriy Nagibin.  Alas, it wasn’t to be. The problems, it seems, began almost immediately.  Fellini died in 1993, before filming on his segment began, while Bogdonovich never completed (or, as far as I’m aware, started) his film.  Ira Barmak, who initiated the project, also passed in 1993, followed by Yuriy Nagibin in 1994, leaving the wraparound unscripted and, by extension, unfilmed. Ultimately only four of the proposed six films were completed: Herzog’s BELLS FROM THE DEEP: FAITH AND SUPERSTITION IN RUSSIA/Glocken aus der Tiefe—Glaube und Aberglaube in Rußland, Russell’s ALICE IN RUSSIALAND, Godard’s THE KIDS PLAY RUSSIAN/Les Enfants jouent à la Russie, and Obayashi’s RUSSIAN LULLABIES, with the Russell and Godard films released on the festival circuit as a double feature (entitled RUSSIA IN THE 90s) and the Herzog and Obayashi segments exhibited as standalone films. Momentous these films weren’t. These days, in fact, they tend to be treated as mere footnotes in their makers’ filmographies. 

 

- Groves, 2025. 

This Alice also doesn't feel like a documentary for various reasons (I'll explain in a bit) but its technically a history documentary. The piece was called "Alice in Russialand" and it aired on late night channel 4 in the UK, I believe airing twice in 1995 and 1996. It then vanished for decades, and finally turned up on lost media Reddit, someone finding it through a VHS tape from Brazilian 1990s TV, where it also appears to have aired, late night on an arts channel.

What is this version like? Despite NOT being extreme as Russell's other work (he was working to Channel 4 broadcast rules after all) it still manages to be eyebrow raising and rather alarming in terms of tone in many places. If you thought the Svankmajer 1988 version was creepy, goodness.

It doesn't start this way, though. It starts in a fairly normal satire genre place, somewhat similar to Pla's 1976 Argentinian version or 1988 Svankmajer, using political figures as stand ins for Wonderland characters. The atmosphere however feels off. As if there is something wrong with the tone of the work. You can see it in how Hetty Baynes acts as Alice. So sincere that she crosses over to creepy. She looks like Tenniel's illustration, except her smile is far too wide and she's far too detached from everything she comes across. Baynes plays this role perfectly. You will have chills.

7 year old Alice really just wants to see a ballet, but unfortunately for her, she's stuck in a history lesson which goes through 200 years of Russian/USSR history all the way up to 1995. You think this might upset her, an unwanted difficult, long history lesson when all she wants is to see theatre, but because of how off this version is, Baynes's Alice barely cares. Her journey in hour one is also a very quick Alice in Wonderland adaptation, going from doors all the way up to trial fairly faithfully. This part of the special is done like a Victorian style stage play, with elaborate and fairly beautiful sets. The most part of the special has a storybook vibe, despite the satire, until it doesn't. Remember this is absolutely not for children. Remember who the director is... 

Remember how off I said the entire special felt? This comes bursting to the forefront when Alice wakes up under a tree... and meets the cheshire cat. (Groves's review notes that this cat is played by the director himself!) Immediately we're thrown off course. As every Carrollian knows, the cheshire cat comes FAR before, after the Duchess. What is he doing here? He's here to tell Alice he's from Chornobyl, and there, everyone died. The Cat seems to find this hilarious. Alice has to follow him, he apparently knows more information.

Now cat wants to show Alice and us, some clips about the USSR. Some of these are archival clips, some are cultural, some are artistic, and some I wonder if Russell just made up himself. (I still do not know, even after reading Groves's review on this special) The way the compilations of clips are organised are to be as jarring as possible, even when the content is not! Some feature overlays upon overlays and dissonant sound. Again I think some of this may be edited by Russell. I couldn't find it confirmed. At some point, your jaw will be on the floor just due to the amount of clips and noise and distortion. As Alice sees 1995 new year across Europe, she finally wakes up...

Oh wait. She doesn't (again). No er.. Alice's reality with her sister is revealed to be just part of a massive book set. Those elaborate book sets from hour one were a part of it. There is no riverbank reality.  Baynes's Alice can't go home. She can never go home.

Sneaks up on you, doesn't it?

I'm not sure who I'd recommend this to. It is very much a curio. History scholars would find it interesting. Europe scholars would too, also film historians. People who like Russell's work would like this. Even though its intended as a documentary, the abrupt shifts in tone and the fact you are never sure where you sit with it, that's more psychological horror. I'm sure a normal documentary could have been done, but its the left turn halfway through this that you'll really remember. Whether or not it was intended to make audiences feel uneasy, well, I have no idea if that is the intention or not. At the moment no one involved with making this has ever commented one way or another. Maybe see for yourself in terms of how you react to it???

Now also on Substack!

 This blog will now be cross-posted with Substack, so if you miss any posts on here, do look for them on there! Substack might in future have exclusive posts just for that, I've not decided yet.

Alice160: Reading Alice's adventures in Wonderland, in French, for the first time

 

(Photo source: Le boncoin, Magnard/Classiques et Patrimoine Alice au pays des Merveilles, schools edition. I highly recommend this edition for B1/B2 french learners. The footnotes make it way easier)

NOTE: Since much of this post is about reading the Alice novels for the first time or in a new language, it might interest you to know that the North American Lewis Carroll Society offers free readings of the novels to US schools. You can donate to this project here (Choose the Memorial fund option)

My first ever encounter, aged 7, with Carroll's novels (then Wonderland, I didn't read Looking-Glass until I was about 9 or 10) was with a dictionary in one hand, and the book in the other. I remember the dictionary was heavy, it was one of those that my family had sellotaped to stop it from pulling apart MANY times. I had to look up a lot of words on that first reading. No 7 year old alive in the last 2 centuries would know what a "bathing-machine" was, nor a "quadrille" unless they were very into dance. Despite the hard words, it didn't matter. I can't quite remember what my feelings on first reading were, except that this 100 + year old book somehow spoke to me in the way at the time 2000s era children's fiction could, only really half do.

(Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) 's original vision of Alice and the croquet game, illustrated in

Alice's adventures Underground manuscript)

In Wonderland, no adult or animal makes sense, Alice is (at least a first time reader who doesn't know the ending reads) alone with no help. She must rely on her own intelligence and her own perceptions. The things she is taught by other people, school, authority: lessons, poems, don't work in a chaotic world that is upside down. Alice is strong willed, and, for the most part, isn't really afraid of anything that gets thrown at her. Sure, Alice's adventures aren't real in narrative, they are a long, strange, asleep-for -too-long dream. The idea is one any reader can relate to, since we've all likely had at least one memorable one in our lives. Alice herself is brilliantly eccentric. Carroll informs us, Alice in the real world loves to pretend to be two people, views her cats as her best friends and equal to people, and maybe even scares the people around her a little. Its this that makes her such a fascinating and brilliant character, and somehow film and TV versions often fail to capture this part of Alice's personality. 

This summer, as part of my French learning attempts, I read Alice's adventures in Wonderland for the first time in another language. It was partly like going back to being 7 again. Lots of words I didn't know. Here a whole tense (Passé Simple) that was partly new to me. The translation I read was the very first one into French, from 1869, by Henri Bué. With footnotes for some words, of course. Bué's translation is for the most part very faithful to Carroll's text, except that its wonderfully french-ified. Alice attempts to speak Italian to the mouse, recites "monsieur corbeau" (mister crow, a fontaine fable, based on the crow and the fox) wrongly, and the Hatter recites a distortion of "ah vous dirai-je" a famous french Victorian nursery rhyme, with the exact same tune as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Little things here and there transplant the story not to Victorian England Oxford but to somewhere in the France French campagne (countryside) and this works brilliantly. 

There are, I'm sure, jokes I missed in Bué's translation, as an early B1 french learner, I'm almost certain. Then again, I missed quite a few jokes on my first reading of Wonderland in English aged 7/8, and that didn't stop me. 

I think sometimes when carrollians worry that children or teenagers will never pick up Carroll's books, and will never enjoy them "now". That publishers must produce abridged editions even for children who are old enough to read the two classics (I don't think age 7/8 is too young an age, even if all jokes aren't understood) We forget how some children will always be drawn to these stories naturally, including all the Victorian words that they don't understand. Folio Junior in France (in an edition I don't have) has footnotes, and a explanation of the author and characters and their world at the back after the novel itself ends. Puffin Classics in the UK do similar but somehow don't have footnotes for some words (why is this?) But, if a child connects with the novels, trust me, they won't really care about what a few words are, and might just look things up just to know. For some people, reading Carroll just fits their personality, or is a way of reading about dreams, or gives them a way of understanding a bizarre, complex world (which the adult world very much is, Carroll knew this as much as anyone) 

I think despite all the complex readings (and sometimes total mis-readings) us adults have given Carroll's two little books, to forget that they were intended for the enjoyment of the 3 Liddell sisters (all under 14 at the time of hearing these tales) is to deny ourselves of both these stories true meaning: fun, and things to read that aren't lessons. Any child can relate and will always relate to that.

4th of July!

(Above: the boating party listen to the story of Alice,  Alice in Wonderland (1986 BBC) Dir: Barry Letts)

Today officially marks so called "Alice's day" (Or at least, that's what Oxford calls it now) when, in 1862, Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll started to tell the Alice stories to the Liddell sisters and Robinson Duckworth on Oxford boating trips. This by Karoline Leach:

Summer of  1862.  Charles Dodgson  is telling the ‘Alice’  story to the three famous sisters, Ina, Alice and Edith Liddell,  while  on their famous river-trips.  Indications are the girls  loved  the tale and were always begging for new instalments, but that Dodgson was less enthusiastic (on one occasion he calls  it the ‘interminable’ Alice’s Adventures, and is peeved because he wants to sing them a new song he just made up instead). At around the same time Alice asks him to write her story down. He promises he will do so.

 Whilst the actual writing of the story would take Dodgson over 6 months to start, the germ of what would become Alice's adventures Underground and, world famous as Alice's adventures in Wonderland, indeed started on these boating trips between friends, the story's episodic structure reflects this, as do the in jokes made for the 4 listeners of the tale. Even if Dodgson was less enamoured with having to continually come back to the Alice story and add extra episodes. The world is forever glad he did! 

(Above: The Three Liddell sisters, 1864, Lorina (seated) Alice (right) and Edith (left) captured in the artwork The Sisters by Sir William Blake Richmond)

Today's recommendation is Alice in Wonderland (1986 BBC) which begins at this very first storytelling boating trip, on the 4th of July. Kate Dorning plays a dual role in this version. She plays both a quiet Alice Liddell, and a delighfully eccentric, wild Alice. For once the two look different, perhaps reflecting that Dodgson never saw his fictional creation as actually being Alice Liddell herself!

Of course Alice160 celebrations will be all year round this year, but the epicentre, as always, is Oxford. Alice's day celebrations are tomorrow there.  If you can't make it, there's a whole list of events worldwide that I've curated here, including at home options. For reading recommendations, I VERY much recommend Macmillan's complete Alice for English language readers, and Jenny Woolf's biography the Mystery of Lewis Carroll (originally published 2010) which is available in English and Japanese editions.

Whichever way you decide to celebrate, have a wonderful July 4th, and July!