"Something changes you when you drive around America," Vogler explains to his boss. Wenders transposes this aching, nameless restlessness to West Germany.

...it was the first in the great German filmmaker's Road Movie trilogy and it immediately helped establish ideas and aesthetics that would dominate not just the other two films but his entire career.

a simple story beautifully and poignantly told

With this film, Wenders crystallized his style of existential sentimentality.

Wenders' salient, head-clearing travelogue

Only just barely.

It takes a long time for Wenders to get where he wants to go but it's worth the wait... .

Touching but never sentimental.

Hauntingly photographed by Robbie Mller, it's one of this hugely uneven filmmaker's crispest, finest moments.

The fragmentary approach could never be called exhilarating, but it has a sly humour, and the mood is sustained by Vogler and Rottlander as the unlikely companions.

A fine and perhaps unique example of that trickiest of genres, the road movie, and the sort of film that really does deserve the cliched response: they don't make them like that any more, because they really don't.

It is a shame the excruciatingly wooden adult actors were not as natural as Yella Rottlnder who played nine-year-old Alice.

Captivating performances from both Vogler and Rottlander whose on-screen chemistry provides the beating heart of Alice In The Cities.

Don't be put off by the black and white and subtitles, this is a family film with intelligence, energy and charm to spare.

Hardly must-see Wenders, but for fans of his road movies, it remains a treat.

There are points when the director allows his voice to ring a little loudly from behind the camera, but the richness and depth of both the photography and the characterisation manage to brush any signs of preachiness and sentimentality from view.

An important film for Wenders and New German Cinema, Alice In The Cities is compulsive viewing for any fan of the director. A freewheeling look at friendship, loneliness and life, the only thing black and white about it is the film stock.