TENNIEL COMES TO LIFE (PAGES OF HISTORY)

JOHN TENNIEL and LEWIS CARROLL

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Tenniel comes to life Actors, costumes and cigarette cards in the visual imagery of the 1930s If the 1933 film is a portal that invites us to cross the looking glass, it is only by observing it closely, behind the scenes, among hand-sewn fabrics and glances hidden behind theatrical masks, that we understand the true ambition of that project: not to simply adapt Lewis Carroll, but to embody Tenniel. Because every frame, every costume, every pose of the actors seems to pursue not reality, but that particular Victorian style that Sir John Tenniel had traced almost seventy years earlier. His characters, born from ink and engravings, find a second life here: restless, poetic, often surreal. And this is precisely the heart of this chapter: exploring who gave body to those figures, how the costumes that replicate the illustration were made, and why those small collectible cards, the cigarette cards, give us today the same enchantment as then, on a pocket scale.