"Alice's Wonderland" is the beginning of a long history of Disney treatment of Lewis Carroll's Alice books. These Alice comedies were loosely inspired by them. Although this one, reportedly, wasn't theatrically released, but was rather made as a proof-of-concept for potential distributors, it's better than others from the series I've seen, including the earliest released one, "Alice's Day at Sea" (1924). Later, Disney would reference "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" with Mickey Mouse in "Thru the Mirror" (1936) and Donald Duck in "Donald in Mathmagic Land" (1959). So, clearly Walt and company had a long-standing interest in the books besides misspelling Carroll's name in the 1951 feature-length cartoon and, as both Carroll and Walt rolled over in their graves, the 3D, CGI monstrosities of 2010 and 2016.
The other Alice comedies don't seem to have anything to do with the books besides featuring a girl named Alice, the dream framing, and her subsequent curious scenarios involving anthropomophic animals. Basically, the same thing happens in this one, except there is a place called "Cartoonland," with its obvious wordplay on "Wonderland," that Alice visits in her dream. There's also a bit of a clock motif, with the animators refereeing the boxing cats and the Cartoonland welcoming committee checking their pocket watches. Alice, as in the books, also goes through a doorway in a tree and a rabbit hole before falling in a fashion similar to that seen in other "Alice in Wonderland" films, except here it happens at the end instead of at the beginning of the dream. There's some dancing and music, too, including a pun made of jazz cats (you guessed it--cartoon cats playing jazz). Best of all, however, is that the dream is connected to the earlier studio-tour footage. One interpretation of the Alice books is that they're a parable for a girl's making sense--or nonsense--of the adult world; likewise, this film Alice is introduced to the adult world of making children's cartoons, which she then dreams about. Not bad for an early experiment in combining live-action cinematography and hand-drawn animation that was never commercially released until it appeared as an extra for DVDs and Blu-rays of the 1951 feature.
This marriage of live-action and animation was also a preoccupation of the day for the rival Fleischer Studios, including with such Out of the Inkwell installments as "Cartoon Factory" (1924), which pit the animator in a battle against his creations. "Alice's Wonderland," on the other hand, takes a different reflexive approach more akin to other studio-tour films of the era, such as "A Tour of the Thomas H. Ince Studio" or the "1925 Studio Tour" of MGM, which also highlighted the filmmaking processes of the companies, as well as advertising their stars. In "Alice's Wonderland," this also gives way to films-within-films as what the animators--the actual ones for Disney and including Walt himself--draw for Alice comes to life on the white boards, with a cat running away from a mouse and the aforementioned cat boxing match. Overall, the drawings are charming enough, and the combination of live-action and animation is effective. Sure, some of the repetitive backgrounds--such as employing the same three characters lined up for Alice's parade in Cartoonland--are relatively lazy, and there's little rhyme or reason to the occasional iris framing, "Alice's Wonderland" remains impressive for a film that was never even theatrically released, including some economical editing through eyeline matches and such to save on the double-exposure matte work and placing of a live Alice within a Cartoonland.
The other Alice comedies don't seem to have anything to do with the books besides featuring a girl named Alice, the dream framing, and her subsequent curious scenarios involving anthropomophic animals. Basically, the same thing happens in this one, except there is a place called "Cartoonland," with its obvious wordplay on "Wonderland," that Alice visits in her dream. There's also a bit of a clock motif, with the animators refereeing the boxing cats and the Cartoonland welcoming committee checking their pocket watches. Alice, as in the books, also goes through a doorway in a tree and a rabbit hole before falling in a fashion similar to that seen in other "Alice in Wonderland" films, except here it happens at the end instead of at the beginning of the dream. There's some dancing and music, too, including a pun made of jazz cats (you guessed it--cartoon cats playing jazz). Best of all, however, is that the dream is connected to the earlier studio-tour footage. One interpretation of the Alice books is that they're a parable for a girl's making sense--or nonsense--of the adult world; likewise, this film Alice is introduced to the adult world of making children's cartoons, which she then dreams about. Not bad for an early experiment in combining live-action cinematography and hand-drawn animation that was never commercially released until it appeared as an extra for DVDs and Blu-rays of the 1951 feature.
This marriage of live-action and animation was also a preoccupation of the day for the rival Fleischer Studios, including with such Out of the Inkwell installments as "Cartoon Factory" (1924), which pit the animator in a battle against his creations. "Alice's Wonderland," on the other hand, takes a different reflexive approach more akin to other studio-tour films of the era, such as "A Tour of the Thomas H. Ince Studio" or the "1925 Studio Tour" of MGM, which also highlighted the filmmaking processes of the companies, as well as advertising their stars. In "Alice's Wonderland," this also gives way to films-within-films as what the animators--the actual ones for Disney and including Walt himself--draw for Alice comes to life on the white boards, with a cat running away from a mouse and the aforementioned cat boxing match. Overall, the drawings are charming enough, and the combination of live-action and animation is effective. Sure, some of the repetitive backgrounds--such as employing the same three characters lined up for Alice's parade in Cartoonland--are relatively lazy, and there's little rhyme or reason to the occasional iris framing, "Alice's Wonderland" remains impressive for a film that was never even theatrically released, including some economical editing through eyeline matches and such to save on the double-exposure matte work and placing of a live Alice within a Cartoonland.