Jan Svankmajer's ALICE

Diegetic Vs. Non diegetic, Verisimilitude, and Dialogue

Czech director Jan Svankmajer’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is a surreal journey into a world of gothic puppets and dead animals. Part live action, part stop-motion animation, it takes an already bizarre story and makes it darker and quite frightening.

Interior scenes, all which take place in a rundown house, are layered with sounds on top of sounds. Beneath it all is the constant ticking of a clock. Its use can be define in many different way, as reminder of the white rabbit’s appointment or as a telegraphing tool to keep the audience engaged in where the white rabbit is going and what will happen if he’s late. This use of non-diegetic sound can be seen as a motif. An underlining theme in Alice is of time and how it’s distorted in dreams.

Because this film is part live action/ party stop-motion some of the sound has to be created by Foley artists or recorded from real environments and from real animals. A chariot drawn by half birds/ half skeletal carnivorous creatures, neighs like horses. Now this is diegetic sound, although we know these inanimate objects can’t make these sounds, it exists in this story world.

What makes Svankmajer stand out is the way he uses both sounds that are true to the objects and sounds that aren’t, be we believe that they do! The horses, a.k.a the hybrid creatures, neigh and the chariot rides over the wood floor as if it were cobblestone. These sound effects don’t stands out considerably unless you’re paying close attention to it. Because it’s a familiar sound associated with these objects we accept it. It plays into the theme of Alice in Wonderland and her dream world. In dreams things are out of the ordinary but normally we don’t question it, it’s true in all its absurdities. It’s not until you wake up that you realize, wow that was weird and totally out of the ordinary.

The film relies heavily on onscreen action, as opposed to reliant on characters, plot, and dialogue. The character of Alice hardly ever speaks unless to say something to the white rabbit such as, “Please sir!” Other use of dialogue is through voice-over by Alice, but it exists outside of the world. She narrates for herself. For example she’ll say, “Alice thought the white rabbit would wait for her but he didn’t.” What we see on screen is a close up of her mouth as if she’s reading from the book and than it cuts to that character playing out the actions. This was a bit confusing to me at first, but now that I think about it this also supports the dream world and how, at least in my own experience, we tend to be on the outside looking in on whatever is happening in our dreams. Even if I’m in it, it’s kind of an out of body experience. This film, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, puts a surreal spin on the classic children’s story that is worth watching again and again.

~Brianna P.