Dreamchild

Poster for 'Dreamchild'

Dreamchild is a 1985 British drama film produced by Verity Lambert, directed by Gavin Millar and written by Dennis Potter. It stars Coral Browne, Ian Holm, Peter Gallagher, Nicola Cowper and Amelia Shankley and is a fictionalized account of Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The story is told from the point of view of the elderly Alice (now Mrs Hargreaves) as she travels to the United States from England to receive an honorary degree from Columbia University celebrating the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth. It was based on Potter's 1965 play Alice.

The film evolves from the factual to the hallucinatory as Alice revisits her memories of the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Holm), in Victorian-era Oxford to her immediate present in the unruly wonderland of Depression-era New York.

Accompanied by a shy young orphan named Lucy (Cowper), old Alice must navigate her way through the modern world of tabloid journalism and commercial exploitation and come to peace with her conflicted childhood with the whimsical and repressed Oxford don whose deep affection for her produced one of the most beloved classics of children's literature.

Storyline

The movie begins on the ship bearing Alice and Lucy from England to New York. As she and Lucy disembark, they are set upon by legions of journalists, all trying to get a story or quote from her. Clearly bewildered by all the excitement, she is befriended by an ex-reporter, Jack Dolan (Gallagher), who helps her and Lucy through the legions of the press. Dolan quickly becomes her agent and finds endorsement opportunities for her. Throughout it all, a romance develops between Jack and Lucy.

But all is not well with Alice. Being so advanced in age, she needs Lucy, of whom she can be very demanding, to be her constant companion. When left alone in their hotel room, she begins to hallucinate and sees Mr. Dodgson in their room, and then, later, the Mad Hatter and March Hare. Joining them for their insane tea party, they berate her for being so old and forgetful. She remembers also the lazy boating party of July 4, 1862, when the young Reverend Charles Dodgson, (Lecturer in Mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, where her father was the Dean), had attempted to entertain her and her sisters by spinning the nonsense tale that grew to be Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Via flashbacks, it is insinuated that Dodgson had an infatuation with the young Alice Liddell. Was it an innocent admiration he had for the girl or something inappropriate? Alice is clearly troubled by her recollections of Dodgson. The parameters of her relationship with him were somewhat tortured. Dodgson was unwaveringly adoring of Alice, and while she was usually kind, she could sometimes be cruel and mocking of him, especially of his occasional stutter - as on the day of the boating party when she was on the verge of her teens and trying to impress a couple of young students (one of whom she eventually marries). Alice tries to rectify her feelings and past relationship with the author in her mind.

By the time she delivers her acceptance speech at Columbia University, she comes to terms with Dodgson and the way she treated him. In another fantasy sequence with the Mock Turtle, the viewers see them finally reconciled together in a way that can be interpreted as all-encompassing, as both mutual apology and forgiveness.

Production

Makeup and creature effects for the film were created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Six complexly detailed creatures, rather malign, as they are in the book, were made. The Gryphon and the sorrowful Mock Turtle live among ledges of rock on a darkling seashore. The March Hare has broken yellowish teeth and soiled looking whiskers and he seems to be chewing even while he's speaking. He, the Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse, and the Caterpillar too, ' converse in the same matter of fact, egalitarian manner that the visiting Alice does.'

Puppet movement and choreography was developed by American actress and choreographer Gates McFadden (later Dr. Beverly Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation) who worked with Henson on Labyrinth and The Muppets Take Manhattan. Due to a problem with work visas, McFadden was unable to receive full credit in this film.

Puppeteers included Ron Mueck, Steve Whitmire, Karen Prell, Big Mick and Michael Sundin.

The film's score was composed by Stanley Myers.

The Chinese costume sequence in the film depicting Dodgson taking Alice's portrait at Oxford is based on actual photographs he took of her and her sisters. Dodgson, an early pioneer of photography, was considered one of the world's first portrait photographers.

Dennis Potter's use of pop entertainment of the 1930s in his works is present in this film. "I Only Have Eyes for You" is sung at a tea dance at the Waldorf Astoria and Mrs. Hargreaves has a scene at a radio station that includes a crooner's rendition of "Confessin'".^[1]

The Depression-era setting of the film is in 1932, when Alice turned 80, two years before she died in 1934.

Critical reception

The film was reviewed favourably by the critic Pauline Kael who praised the performances. "Nothing I've seen Coral Browne do onscreen had prepared me for this performance. In the past she seemed too bullying a presence; she was too stiffly theatrical for the camera and her voice was a blaster. Here, as Mrs. Hargreaves, she has the capacity for wonder of the Alice of the stories, and when she's overtaken by frailty her voice is querulous and fading." "The bright, poised, subtly flirty Alice at ten [is] played by Amelia Shankley, whose conversations with her sisters have an angelic precision. The sound of these imperious little-princess voices blended in idle chitchat is plangent, evocative. It makes you happy and makes you respond to the happiness of the Reverend Mr. Dodgson as he loiters outside the little girls windows, eavesdropping." "Ian Holm, who plays Dodgson, has to achieve almost all his effects passively, by registering the man's acute and agonizing self-consciousness and his furtive reactions to what goes on around him; it's all there in Holm's performance."

Awards

Coral Browne was awarded the London Evening Standard's British Film Award for Best Actress for her performance.

References

1. ^ Pauline Kael, Hooked, p.53 ISBN 0-7145-2903-6

External links

• Dreamchild at the Internet Movie Database