Martin Scorsese's first Hollywood studio production also marked his first (and only) foray into a woman-centered story. Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn), a resigned Southwest housewife, takes advantage of her trucker husband's sudden death to hit the road with her bratty son Tommy (Alfred Lutter) and pursue her childhood dream of a singing career. She finds a job as a lounge singer, but after a horrific encounter with an abusive new beau (Harvey Keitel), she flees and winds up taking a waitress job
at Mel's Diner, run by gruff cook Mel (Vic Tayback). With her career on hold, Alice soon finds strength and self-worth through her friendship with the other waitresses, saucy Flo (Diane Ladd) and spacy Vera (Valerie Curtin). When sensitive rancher David (Kris Kristofferson) starts courting her, Alice wonders if she wants to abandon her goals for domesticity again. To contrast Alice's dream life with her reality, Scorsese created a stylized opening sequence of Alice as a child reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, Duel in the Sun and Gone With the Wind, before shifting into the present-day atmospheric immediacy of location shooting and scenes built out of improvisations. That opening sequence alone cost over twice as much as Scorsese's debut feature, Who's That Knocking At My Door?. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is a touching and poignant movie which speaks to both sexes about the power of equality and the struggle for independence.
Burstyn won a well-deserved Oscar for her performance, and she is matched in expertise by Ladd and Tayback, but the acting cannot conceal the storyline's shortcomings.
Alternating between gritty realism and red-hued fantasy, this is one of those 70s films that has worn well, managing to be universal in its heart while picking out specifics that now look exactly of their time.
Scorsese shows his range as a filmmaker and proves what makes him so good: he's a director with an eye for fancy camera work but a heart for his characters and the journeys they take.
A point of departure, this is Scorsese's tribute to the classic woman's film, offering Ellen Burstyn a solid role for which she won her only Oscar Award
Its intelligence is cinematic, feminist: it doesn't leave you thinking about women (although the subject was welcome) so much as about its own energy and wit.
This is perhaps Scorsese's most conventional film about the everyday, yet one that is memorable and poignant, due in part to a terrific performance by Ellen Burstyn.
All right. I tried to get through this. I really did. I was just so bored and so uninterested in the characters I could not for the life of me suffer through it.Amazing that Scorsese has some amazing winners. And then he has stuff like this. I blame Netflix for continually recommending me to this.
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