1h 16min | Animation, Action, Family | 13 May 1949 (France) | Color
Director: Dallas Bower
Stars: Stephen Murray, Ernest Milton, Pamela Brown.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042189/
Available on AmazonPrime; watched here; mediocre print.
If "exceptional" means hideous, then the synopsis is accurate. I don't see these as puppets (which invokes marionnettes or socks for me). These appear to be stop-motion creatures.
In this film, the songs slow the story, which already appears slow from the stop-motion.
A joint UK, French, US financed film, I'd prefer to banish this from my list of US musicals, but technically I can't.
The woman playing 10-year old Alice was born in '26. She's pretty, and resembles drawings of Alice, but 22/23?
The live-action beginning of the film is somewhat interesting. But when I saw the stop-motion animation, how ugly the characters were, how slowly they moved, how badly framed some scenes were (characters occupy the bottom 20% or less of the screen), I seriously considered stopping the film. But my self-imposed rule about not rating a film without watching it intervened, and I want to prevent myself from attempting this again.
indie, dir. Bower; 4
