Dreamchild (1985) on Netflix
Widow Alice Hargreaves travels to New York to accept an honorary degree for the Alice Liddell who inspired Lewis Carroll. Reporters crowd her, and memories of her Oxford childhood return.
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- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb6.6/101,955 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
The widowed Alice Hargreaves comes to New York in 1932 with her carer, the young orphan Lucy, to collect an honorary degree from Columbia University marking the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth. She is the Alice Liddell whose childhood friendship with the author, known to her as Mr. Dodgson, produced his most famous book. Reporters swarm her at every turn; Jack Dolan, a former reporter, steers her through them and takes on her engagements. Alone in her hotel room, she is visited by Wonderland creatures, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon among them, who mock her age and her failing memory. Her thoughts return to the boating party of 4 July 1862, when Dodgson entertained her and her sisters with the nonsense tale that became his book.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dreamchild (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Gavin Millar said producer Verity Lambert never wanted Nigel Hawthorne cast as Alice's father, the dean, and disliked every scene he was in so much that she cut him out and out until Millar had to remove Hawthorne's part completely.
- Coral Browne, who won the Evening Standard Best Actress Award for the film, paid her own costs for a Variety ad offering her performance 'for your consideration' in Oscar season and went on the TV chat show Wogan to publicise the film.
- American actress and choreographer Gates McFadden developed the puppet movement and choreography for the film, but a problem with her work visa meant she was unable to receive full credit for it.
- The scene of Dodgson photographing Alice in Chinese costume at Oxford recreates actual photographs he took of her and her sisters; Dodgson, an early photography pioneer, is considered one of the world's first portrait photographers.
- Dennis Potter had already adapted the story for the BBC's The Wednesday Play in 1965 as Alice, and expanded that script into Dreamchild, which is based on the real incident of Alice going to New York to collect an honorary degree.
- Dreamchild got only a very limited release in a few art-house theaters, playing one London cinema in Britain, and disagreements and legal challenges among its production company, distributors and cinema chains nearly made it disappear without a trace.
