Mel Stuart’s take on Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory may have been usurped in the public’s consciousness by Tim Burton’s curious update from a few years ago, but while the visual invention and superlative effects work caused eyes to pop there was a substantial dearth of the key ingredient present in abundance in the 1971 film – magic.
Charlie Bucket, the boy Dahl placed at the forefront of the source material – here removed from the film’s title, escapes his familial poverty for a day and joins four other children on a tour of the most famous chocolate factory in the world, and meet its eccentric owner – Mr Willy Wonka. While Charlie is almost too twee to bear his innocence and genuine delight in the weird and wonderful rooms of the factory and the dizzying display put on by Wonka places him apart from his fellow golden ticket winners, all of whom meet satisfyingly nasty ends in true Dahl fashion.
It is a light morality tale, dunked in the most sumptuous of children’s wish fulfilment, dusted with some sugary songs and wrapped up in a well told tale with a neat line in the more subversive elements a childhood comprises of, though the sharp edges were dulled in the adaptation. It is, as the song has it, a world of pure imagination and benefits gratly from a brilliant central performance from Gene Wilder, who is as cantankerous, cold, unpredictable and charming as the character Dahl wrote (though the author apparently was not a fan of Stuart’s film) and in walking the line between magician and hermit Wilder mesmerises and delights.
I loved the film as a child and saw it more times than I can recall and when reviewing this DVD I watched it with my two and half year old son who sat in rapt attention breaking out often in a huge smile, a reaction I can remember very well. It’s a timeless story but I knew that already and the look of the film is dated, but only superficially and the reason this film works is that it doesn’t seek to instruct, merely to convey the underlying message with subtlety and humour – life is sweet, but too much too fast can make you sick. I had a lot of fun revisiting it, found myself able to quote the majority of it and felt the distance in my affections between this film and Tim Burton’s version increase greatly.
The 40th anniversary DVD has no special features, despite the existence of a number of documentaries and retrospectives out there. It’s a shame, but for a cheap film to whip the kids (and the kid in you) into a pre-Easter chocolate haze look no further.
Film: [Rating:4/5]
Disc: [Rating:0/5]
