French Literature Reviews - 2026

Albert Montagne, Les Alices aux pays des cauchemars. De Walt Disney à Marilyn Manson
Art and Visual Culture

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There are two stories conceived by Lewis Carroll in 1865 and 1871. However, one must not forget their initial draft, Alice's Adventures Under Ground from 1863. This death-haunted, rarely visited world is examined here through the lens of cinema. Starting from Disney's poetic Alice in Wonderland, a succession of contrasting Alices are explored from fantastic, aesthetic, philosophical, psychological, erotic, political, and Masonic perspectives. These include the adaptations of Tim Burton (Alice in the Land of Surprises), Claude Chabrol (Alice in Purgatory), Louis Malle (Alice in the Land of the Young and Old Dead), Roman Polanski (Alice in the Land of the Sex-Obsessed), Guillermo del Toro (Alice and Her Inner Demons), Jorge Feliu (The Young and Old Alices), Jan Švankmajer (Alice in the Land of Phantom Puppets), the Wachowski siblings (Alice in the Land of Viruses), and Marilyn Manson (Phantasmagorical Alice).

Albert Montagne holds a doctorate and a teaching certification in history, as well as a master's degree in public law. A specialist in film censorship, he is a member of the Institut Jean Vigo and a contributor to Cahiers de la Cinémathèque, Darkness, Censure et Cinéma, and CinémAction, as well as a collaborator with Questions Internationales and Historiens et Géographes. He has published Histoire juridique des interdits cinématographiques en France (1909-2001) (L'Harmattan, 2007) and edited Violence, censure et cinéma (CinémAction, 2018), Le train des cinéastes (CinémAction, 2012), and Monstres, du mythe au culte (CinémAction, 2008).

Lewis Carroll's nineteenth-century works have long invited diverse creative responses across literature and the visual arts. The cultural trajectory of these narratives demonstrates how fantastic fiction can be continuously reinterpreted to reflect shifting aesthetic, political, and philosophical concerns. Cinematic adaptations frequently appropriate familiar source material to explore uncanny, satirical, or subversive themes, moving far beyond the boundaries of traditional children's literature into darker conceptual territories.

Albert Montagne holds a doctorate and a teaching certification in history, as well as a master's degree in public law. A specialist in film censorship, he is a member of the Institut Jean Vigo and a contributor to Cahiers de la Cinémathèque, Darkness, Censure et Cinéma, and CinémAction. Readers interested in the history of film adaptation, cinematic censorship, and cultural transformations of nineteenth-century texts may find this volume relevant.