Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

MOVIE #1,606 •🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿• 05.06.24 𝑀𝒶𝓇𝓉𝓎: A MARTIN SCORSESE DIRECTOR FOCUS 🇮🇹🇺🇸 Today is my birthday (but I’m actually writing this a few weeks earlier) and as a gift to myself from the movie cosmos I’ve been bestowed Scorses’s best film to date (I feel like I’ll be writing that several times over the next few months). From the opening, highly-stylized intro shot on a beautiful old school set, cloaked in red and presented in Academy ratio, it’s clear that this is the moment where Marty has come into his own. There’s so much to love here and the attention to detail is impeccable: from the kids rolling their eyes at their moms’ melodrama when Alice first moves away, to the masterful diner scenes at their last stop in Tucson. As soon as we meet this gaggle of unique characters, we know them all instantly.

Every moment of happiness is followed by some increasingly bleak scenario: it's not a linear descent, which makes it even harder (and more rewarding) for the audience. The movie ends on an up-beat, and maybe there's something in Alice's realization at the diner that will leave you thinking positively, but like every glimmer of hope it feels false, doomed. I'd often heard how depressing this film is. That's true, of course, but you still manage to leave it with the feeling that no matter how bad things get, these characters will still press on. False hope is still hope, in the end. And that's better than nothing. This is summed up wonderfully in a purely visual way here…

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⫷ MOVIE #1,605 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,607 ⫸

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Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is a 1974 American romantic comedy drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Robert Getchell. It stars Ellen Burstyn as a widow who travels with her preteen son across the Southwestern United States in search of a better life. Kris Kristofferson, Billy "Green" Bush, Diane Ladd, Valerie Curtin, Lelia Goldoni, Vic Tayback, Jodie Foster, Alfred Lutter, and Harvey Keitel appear in supporting roles. It was released on December 9, 1974.