Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the old movie)

Although not as commercially successful as the later version with Johnny Depp, earning a mere $4million compared to $470million, the Mel Stuart version with Gene Wilder as the eponymous owner of the famous chocolate factory is seen by some as a more gentle and accessible version of Roald Dahl’s story ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. Wilder was 38 when he took the role, a good four years younger than Johnny Depp in his version and yet Wilder’s seems the more mature and less capricious portrayal of Wonka.

The Willy Wonka of Wilder’s is not given much of a family history so we can only make assumptions as to what has gone before to create such a strange and exotic person. Wilder’s Wonka has little sympathy for what happens to the spoilt children when they break the rules in his factory, dismissing each event with a joke. However his retrieval of each incident with a practical instruction to an Oompa Loompa with a wistful expression indicates that he might actually care what happens to them. Wilder’s Wonka is unpredictable in an eccentric but playful way; one never really worries about what will happen to all his guests in the factory. This is not so true of Johnny Depp’s version where you wonder how far a ghoulish persona, like Sweeney Todd that he played later in 2007, lies beneath the surface.

One might have wondered why it was felt necessary to remake ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ other than to make money and in some ways although the 2005 Tim Burton version sticks more closely to the story it does not add very much. The original was criticised as too morally dark a film to attract true family audiences and yet Burton’s film is even darker and more gothic with Wonka much more anti-social and much less likeable than Wilder’s Wonka who is simply an eccentric obsessive in pursuit of the ultimate chocolate experience.