1971@50: WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

Reclusive Willy Wonka decides to open his chocolate works for the winners of five golden tickets and award the winners a lifetime supply of chocolate. Charlie Bucket dreams of this and buys as many Wonka bars as he can to see if there's a ticket in one. Charlie's family is so poor that this totals at two, both duds. Meanwhile the tickets are being found the world over in a global wildfire of FOMO. The winners go to the undeserving rich and the overindulged. But nothing for deserving poor Charlie. It's not really a spoiler to reveal that he does find one and joins the other winners on the day of the event. Wonka appears before the eager crowd with a prank that pretty much sets his character key as a mischevious wit and the factory tour begins.

I'm going to be spare with the details as this film is worth watching clean the first time or with ready surprise the next. The Chocolate Factory is a magical place where a kind of dream logic seems to have designed the attractions and features like lickable wallpaper, or a chocolate river. Despite the psychedelic colours and Heath Robinson contraptions and the whimsy of their host the children are being put through tests and those who fail are eliminated in ways that might please both the readers of Lewis Carroll and Dante. The fact that keeps this movie from just being a sunny honey bunny kid's fest is the thread of darkness woven through it. Greed, entitlement etc. most of the children meet punishments that fit the sin (however secular that sin is).

Gene Wilder is perfect casting for the flamboyant Wonka, one minute PT Barnum the next a kind of snide Mad Hatter, grounding the surface lightness. His voice, almost always on the verge of a scream is well known to comedy fans of a certain age and the edge it provides is deep from every utterance of callousness coming from the children and parents of the children. There is a kind of unreconstructed Grimm's cruelty about him that reminds us that fairy tales were meant as warnings.

The rest of the cast also shines. Julie Dawn Cole as Veruca Salt is infuriatingly spoiled. Paris Themmen's Mike Teevee is almost disturbingly given over to tv/media. Jack Albertson is a flawed but warm and supportive grandpa to Peter Ostrum's Charlie who convinces us of his troubled goodness.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory remains a warm and wicked warning to the spendy first world. The technology and effects on show are kept to an era-spanning credibility. In fact, if a remake were to be made I could think of no one better to update it than ... Oh, he did. Well, he tried. Tim Burton made the scenes and loopiness slicker but completely forgot to strengthen any of the characters. Willy Wonka becomes a kind of simpering Michael Jackson whose slinky coldness alienates everyone on the screen and everyone in front of it. We love Gene Wilder's creation but cautiously, knowing his pranking nature. We are only spooked by Johnny Depp's. The coda that offers an explanation for Wonka's darker side is an implosion of cuteness. It tells the difference between using darkness as an undercurrent and giving things a dark look. Willy Wonka at fifty is as strong as it was at conception, a sturdy fable of conscience.

I saw the 4K restoration and marvelled. If you're starting a UHD collection, add it.