Alice in Wonderland

The sound era’s first major adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” story, Norman McLeod’s Alice in Wonderland boasts an all-star cast of Paramount players: from Cary Grant and Gary Cooper to W.C. Fields and Lubitsch regulars Edward Everett Horton and Charles Ruggles, along with Griffith supporting star, Mae Marsh. Interweaving episodes from both of Carroll’s Alice books, the film is both madcap and mordant. Though directed by McLeod, the film’s expressionistic and claustrophobic tone is largely due to its co-screenwriter/art director William Cameron Menzies, whose career after Alice veered from Hollywood spectacles such as Gone with the Wind and Duel in the Sun to dark, atomic-age fantasies such as Things to Come and Invaders from Mars. “As dazzling as today’s digital effects can be, we remain all too aware of how they are accomplished (computers!) for them to possess the seductive sense of mystification that Menzies and McLeod achieved here, using practical techniques derives from Victorian stage magic.”—Dave Kehr, New York Times.

Bing Theater | $5 admission | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or purchase online.