Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

When Marty Was Good

An early Martin Scorsese film when the director was good, bringing out great performances with a sparce script.

Ellen Burstyn is a hard luck wife with a wife-beating husband. The husband is out of the picture suddenly and she must make it on her own with her young son in tow. Burstyn's acting style, just short of bursting into hysteria at any moment, very interesting really.

Harry Keitel has a small part, but steals the show as usual. His cowboy accent is a little odd, but that actor can menace.

A small cameo of young boy-like Jody Foster. What were her parents thinking? You could see it coming. August 26, 2008

Dishonest

Ultimately this is a dishonest film. To be an honest film, the husband would have had to be a decent, if boring, provider, and he would have had to be divorced, rather than killed off. The ending is also a stretch. Nevertheless, a style of story telling that today's directors should model. July 4, 2008

YEARS AGO

Saw this movie years ago and love Ellen as an actress in everything since. The movie was great. May 2, 2008

Scorsese channels Douglas Sirk

At times almost harking back to the Douglas Sirk weepies of the 50s, Scorsese's follow-up to Mean Streets could not have been more different, but he attacks his material in much the same manner, if with a noticeably bigger budget. The camera is still restless but where many of his later films have gravitated towards camera effects and viscera, the nervy photography is here still designed to serve the characters rather than just pump up the scene. There are still the inevitable explosions of violence (when you see a soft-spoken and charming Harvey Keitel, you know a flick-knife's not far behind) but in a recognisable domestic context here.

Dealing with everyday people and everyday emotions, the opening sequence hints at the shortfall between movie-inspired dreams and real life that was to become the backbone of Scorsese's heavily stylised New York, New York, but while the less ambitious film, this is by far the more perfectly realised. And Ellen Burstyn's performance is a revelation. As the recently widowed mother trying to eke out a living as a singer on the road but ending up as a waitress in a small-town cafe, she demonstrates an astonishing range without resorting to the kind of acting pyrotechnics and incessant technique that limited so many actresses of the Streep era. Even in an oustanding cast, she leaves them all standing.

With a great use of music - as in Mean Streets a mixed bag of seventies rock and standards - and an exciting blend of energy and sensitivity that comes as much from the superb screenplay as the direction, this too has defied the years and remains just as vital and relevant to everyday life and dreams four decades on as it did on its first release.

Along with a good widescreen transfer the disc includes an audio commentary by Martin Scorsese, Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson, a documentary featurette Second Chances and the original theatrical trailer.
April 28, 2008

Disappointing & over-hyped

I feel like the boy in the story 'The Emperor's New Clothes' daring to shout out that in fact everybody else is praising nothing at all.

I finally watched this film because I was off work sick and had nothing better to do, and really can't understand why it's so famous.

The son is nothing but a precocious, indulged, whining, annoying brat.

The music was dire the first time round, and not something I wanted to re-encounter (Mott the HOOPLE? Marc BOLAN? )

I never cared about what happened to Alice: she was so stupid she decided to drive to Monterey from Socorro, New Mexico, by going in entirely the wrong direction. To go from Phoenix (a day's drive from her home, not much of a slog!) to Monterey via Tuscon is laughably pathetic.

And the ending - what a cop-out - true lurve with a convenient cowboy.

All in all, a life-draining experience. - I'd rather have the 1 hour and 45 mins of my life back, which I could spend doing something more entertaining - like loading the dishwasher..... December 4, 2007

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