ghosts – This Film Is 100 Years Old

The Alice Comedies were a series of short cartoon/live action hybrids, directed by Walt Disney in the mid to late 1920s. A total of 57 shorts were made between 1923 and 1927, and these three were the 2nd, 3rd and 4th releases in the series, all coming out in the first few months of 1924.

As in Alice’s Wonderland (see here), Alice repeatedly falls into a dream and has interactive animated adventures on a theme – she goes to the seaside in Alice’s Day At Sea and dreams of the living under the sea, gets trapped in a haunted house in Alice’s Spooky Adventure and dreams of ghosts, and then dresses up as a sheriff and murders some Indians in Alice’s Wild West Show. I assume that was the style at the time.

The only real change to the format in any of these is that a bunch of fairly stereotypical silent movie kids/street urchins/etc turn up in the real life segments of Alice’s Spooky Adventure and Alice’s Wild West Show, although luckily they don’t intrude on the dream sequences, as they’re all pretty tedious and superfluous, and much, much worse than any of the animals Alice is friends with.

Of these three films, Alice’s Spooky Adventure is by far the best (she even gets engaged to a cat), Alice’s Day At Sea is also pretty good (she gets driven around by a dog – see above – and also there’s an amazing octopus in it – see below) and Alice’s Wild West Show is by far the worst (it takes a whole 6 minutes to even get to any of the animated action, and then it’s mostly rubbish anyway).

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Notes

1. I watched these on youtube. There’s various different versions on there, all of varying quality, but these were the best ones I found: Alice’s Day At Sea; Alice’s Spooky Adventure; Alice’s Wild West Show.

2. There’s another 9 or so of these from 1924, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to think of anything much more to say about them even if I do get around to watching them all.

3. Unless the cat turns up again

4. What an excellent cat to get engaged to

5. Also in Alice’s Day At Sea this guy pesters the dog awake

6. And I’m pretty sure he’s the clock from Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared‘s dad.

7. Man, clocks are terrifying, aren’t they?

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Film Information

Title: Alice’s Day At Sea
Director: Walt Disney
Year: 1924
Duration: 10 minutes
Watch: youtube

Title: Alice’s Spooky Adventure
Director: Walt Disney
Year: 1924
Duration: 9 minutes
Watch: youtube

Title: Alice’s Wild West Show
Director: Walt Disney
Year: 1924
Duration: 13 minutes
Watch: youtube

Scrooge, Or Marley’s Ghost is the oldest Christmas Carol adaptation on film, ade in 1901 by WR Booth (who directed a few other films I’ve already reviewed here, if you’re interested in).

This is a very quick run through of A Christmas Carol, assuming the audience already knows the story, and instead simply condensing the whole thing down into five scenes (although unfortunately the last one seems to have been lost at some point in the century since).

But still, we get the three visions of past, present and future, with some nice early double exposure trick shots to help portray the ghosts, and some good overacting from Scrooge (I especially like his “Look! It’s me!” turn to the camera when he sees the scene from his past).

Because it’s so short, this is fairly slight all round, but it’s pretty charming nonetheless, and I like how utterly delighted the children in Bob Cratchit’s scene seem to be. I was also kind of surprised to see the word ‘Xmas’ here, but apparently that’s hundreds of years old and not some relatively modern invention like I’d obviously previously assumed. Maybe X isn’t quite the futuristically cool letter I’d always thought it to be.

Now, while Scrooge was the oldest Christmas Carol adaptation, the oldest Dickens film is the (very short) Death Of Poor Joe, which was made a year or so earlier, in 1900. A whole minute of ultra misery, this recreates a single scene from Bleak House, and there’s not much to say about it really (I have never read Bleak House, so the full sadness of the situation is lost on me, I’m afraid).

But for completeness’s sake I have included it here.

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Notes

1. I watched Scrooge, Or Marley’s Ghost on the BFI Player

2. But it’s also on youtube if you can’t see the BFI Player version.

3. Although that version seems to be played at double the speed of the one on the BFI site.

4. I don’t know why.

5. Also I watched this while listening to this version of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence by Ryuichi Sakamoto, which seemed to fit rather nicely.

6. Although it’s such a lovely bit of music it probably fits nicely with everything.

7. Also, I watched The Death Of Poor Joe on the BFI Player too.

8. And that’s available on youtube too.

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Film Information

Title: Scrooge, or Marley’s Ghost
Director: WR Booth
Year: 1901
Duration: 6 minutes
Watch: BFI Player; youtube

Title: The Death Of Poor Joe
Director: GA Smith
Year: 1900
Duration: 1 minutes
Watch: BFI Player; youtube