Golden Oldies: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Starring: Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum, Julie Dawn Cole & Diana Sowle

Directed by: Mel Stuart

Rating: ★★★★½

I haven’t watched this movie for a very, very long time, but since it is the Christmas season, I thought that it made sense too. The reason why I hadn't seen it for ages is probably because I had viewed it too many times as a child. But since it was on recently, in glorious High Definition, I couldn’t resist. I wanted to see if it was as good as I remembered it being: if it was just as luminescent and captivating to view as an adult as it was as a child.

The lucky Golden Ticket Winners look in amazement at the Chocolate Room.

And it really did not disappoint me. In glorious Technicolor, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory still looks as vibrant as it did in the 1970s when it was released. The only problem is that, in HD, and because I’m now an adult, you can really see that the titular chocolate factory is actually just a set. And yes, that is slightly sad, but in another way, it is pretty amazing to realise how much detail they put into the design of the props, backdrops and various gadgets that all make the entire film seem so delectable and entrancing.

Director Mel Stuart, whose ten year old daughter had just finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, and asked him to make it into a film, managed to convince Quaker Oats who were, at the time, looking to promote a new candy bar, to buy the rights to the book and then finance the movie, so that they could make a tie-in product that would be easily promoted. Quaker Oats agreed, and as soon as it was decided that the film would be a musical, and its name changed to Willy Wonka instead of Charlie to promote the new line of chocolate, Roald Dahl himself was asked to write the screenplay, although, in the end, David Seltzer ended up adding to and rewriting 30% of it, much to Dahl’s disgust.  Because of this, he refused to allow Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator to be made.

Roald Dahl wanted English comedian Spike Milligan to play Wonka, but after asking various actors, who all turned the role down, Gene Wilder was chosen, but he said he would only take the part on one condition: if he could hobble out of the factory on his cane, lose it and then do a somersault, so that, from this point on, you wouldn’t know if Willy Wonka could be trusted. It’s good to know that a movie ranked 74^th on Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Momentsstarted out as it would continue: by having an incredibly dark edge to it.

Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.

The film was critically well received, but did not make as much money as Paramount Pictures and Quaker Oats had hoped, and so ended up selling its rights to Warner Bros. Like so many other cult movies, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’s popularity rose due to repeated showings on television during the 1980s and is now considered a classic. But it deserves to be: it is a well written, well-acted, well-made piece of early 70s cinema. The psychedelic set pieces only add to its creepy and zany charm, and you won’t find many child actors nowadays who can actually… act.

He's got a Golden Ticket!

Peter Ostrum, who plays Charlie, is likeable and endearing. You want him to succeed. He deserves it. You don’t really find movies currently being made where the central protagonist has such a realistically hard life. The shack that he lives in with his family is believable to imagine: back then, life was tough for people. Being able to buy a loaf of bread really was a luxury for a lot of the population. Most people in modern day Britain would consider life hard if they didn’t have internet access or the latest smart phone. But back then, people didn’t get welfare, so if you had no money, you had to make ends meet however you could. That’s why the part of the movie when Charlie goes to visit his mother in the launderette is all the more touching. You can see the back breaking labour she has to endure to keep her family alive. That’s why it is quite jarring when Charlie asks his Grandpa Joe to accompany him to the factory: what about his poor mother?

The famous boat in the infamous river of chocolate.

As I already stated, the Chocolate Room, with the chocolate fountain, inflatable lollypops and giant polystyrene mushrooms, 40 years on, really does look like a set. But it is an amazing set. I’m sure any child watching it for the first time would still think it looks wonderful, mainly because the idea is so potent. Why a chocolate factory has to have a room that gets smaller, lickable wallpaper, a room full of bubbles and a nightmare river cruise doesn’t really matter, because it is all so wonderful. It is also terrifying, when you really think about it. An eccentric millionaire chocolatier invites children to his factory only to pick them off one by one so that eventually the chosen trustworthy child can prove himself worthy of inheriting everything, including a group of small green aliens who run the place, is pretty dark. The movie is, essentially, a horror film. The horrible children suffer a cruel and disturbing fate because of their own greed.

Don't ignore Wonka's warnings...

And we can’t ignore the tunnel scene. As a child, it is horrifying. As an adult, it looks pretty rubbish, mainly because of the poor graphics. But nonetheless, it’s still unsettling. What do snails and centipedes and beheaded chickens in a kaleidoscopic tunnel have to do with anything? Why would you allow your children to continue the tour after this point, especially after everyone has just witnessed a small child being sucked into a pipe and no one did anything to stop it?! How It Should Have Ended addresses this, in a video clip here.

You should be confused Charlie... why would you have a scary tunnel in the middle of a chocolate factory?

But it is all the small touches, like this tunnel scene, that make the movie so great, and enduring. The random scenes in the first half of people desperately searching for answers to get a golden ticket are hilarious, even if they are oddly placed. The ‘computer’ which looks horribly dated, a man with his psychiatrist and a woman whose husband are being ransomed for Wonka bars are all moments that, as a child, I didn’t quite understand. I just wanted them to get to the chocolate factory. But they are all so funny, and perfectly encapsulate what people probably would do under these circumstances.

The music shouldn’t be overlooked. The score is excellent, and the songs, while sometimes slightly quirky and weird, are memorable and uplifting. I’ve Got A Golden Ticket, I Want It Now and Pure Imagination will be stuck in my head for a long time now, and I remember singing along to them and enjoying them so much as a child. The Oompa Loompa songs are classics, and even the song that I always fast forwarded (Cheer Up Charlie), which no children probably ever enjoyed, is much better than I remembered.

Grandpa Joe is a bad influence on Charlie, and almost costs him the grand prize!

This film is clearly made for children, but everyone can enjoy it. Peculiar little moments like the bubble room and the car that squirts foam and the hat stand that grabs Grandpa Joe’s hat and the scary man with the cart of knives who tells Charlie that nobody ever goes in and nobody ever goes out, all make this film excellent. There are so many of these hilarious and brilliant little moments: all of them fascinating, charming, and sometimes, terrifying. And that’s what children like. Trust Roald Dahl to know how to entertain kids!

"Snozzberries? Who's ever heard of Snozzberries?"

I could write so much more about Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.I could talk about how good Julie Dawn Cole is as Veruca, and how amazing Grandpa Joe is, particularly at the end when he shouts at Willy Wonka, and how, even though Wonka himself is never really at any point nice to any of the characters, we still love him anyway. But I can’t go on forever- this article is already long enough! It just makes me so happy to watch such an amazing movie that holds up after all these years, and is still as great as I remember it being. Maybe Roald Dahl didn’t like it (but then, he didn’t like The Witches, and everyone else does!), but his wacky imagination inspired a movie that so many people hold close to their hearts.

Charlie wins the grand prize, and everything he ever wanted.

I’m not one for cheesy happy endings, but the closing line of the film has to be one of my favourites. It is perfectly timed, and delivered, and since Charlie deserves such a happy life, after everything he has been through, it’s great to see him get everything he has ever wanted, and so lives happily ever after. And seeing the plastic model of the great glass elevator fly in front of a blue screen is a wonderful image to close the film, even though it looks so fake. Who doesn’t love the great glass elevator? And who doesn’t love this movie? This is one film that has deservedly withstood the test of time, and deserves the title of ‘Golden Oldie’.