Waste of time

Crappy film

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This is the foundation for the TV show, Alice. This is a much more complex study in characters under stress. Alice is trying to do what is good for her son, even though he is a fragile ego, unable to cope very well with their peripatetic ways. She does everything she can but this is a good study of the forces that come into play when a single woman tries to take it on the road with a child. We get to meet the whole range of characters. The gregarious Flo and Mel (Vic Tayback who reprised the role on television), as well as a set of interesting customers and acquaintances. While she tries to find love it evades her. This movie is not earth shatteringly complex, but it does give us some memorable moments.

I had never seen Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More, but I had seen the Alice TV series which was taken from this film. If you think you're going to see a lot of situation comedy here, disabuse yourself of that notion. This original film is as serious as a crutch about a recently widowed woman Ellen Burstyn trying to both raise her adolescent son and find her own fulfillment. Part of Burstyn's identification is that she was named after her mother's favorite film star Alice Faye and has aspirations as a singer. But when we meet her she's settled down in her marriage to probably not the greatest catch in the world in Billy Green Bush and their son Alfred Lutter,III. They live pretty much paycheck to paycheck.But when Bush is killed in an automobile accident, Burstyn wants to move from Socorro, New Mexico back to Monterey, California where she grew up and where she felt truly happy. So they take to the road and the story really starts from there.Ellen Burstyn got her career role and a Best Actress Oscar for this film. It's one multi-layered performance, especially in her scenes with Lutter whose hormones are starting to kick in and he's a handful. She gets into a bad relationship while lingering in Phoenix with a married man whom she didn't know was married. Her scenes with Lane Bradbury as the wife and the psychotic Harvey Keitel when she learns what a violent psychotic he is are devoid of dialog for the most part on Burstyn's part. But her expressions contain so much meaning. Keitel should be commended for his performance here also.In fact after both Bush and Keitel, Burstyn's understandably gun shy when she meets rancher Kris Kristofferson. Is Kristofferson the real deal or is Burstyn just afraid? And how will young Mr. Lutter factor in? For that you need and should watch Alice Doesn't Live Her Any More.The film also got Oscar nominations for Robert Getchell's original story and screenplay and for Diane Ladd as her fellow server at Mel's Diner in Tucson. Ladd's is not the comic performance from the Alice TV series that Polly Holiday was. But she's been around the block a few times and has some sage advice for all who listen. Vic Tayback is the only member of the film cast to repeat his role in the TV series. His Melvin Sharples is subdued here, he really gets to shine on the small screen.Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More was directed by Martin Scorsese and is a timeless film. Absolutely could be remade today and try to figure out who could play these parts with today's players.

Martin Scorsese's fourth feature, a rare anomaly in his oeuvre where a female protagonist is at the helm of the entire story, since maestro can be addressed as anything but a woman's director, but in fact, it is an Ellen Burstyn's star-vehicle, and Scorsese was the young talent being picked by her personally for the project, it won Burstyn an Oscar, a hard-earned victory over Gena Rowlands in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, in hindsight.Burstyn plays our titular heroine, Alice Hyatt, a housewife in New Mexico, trapped in a fraught marriage with his offish husband Donald (Bush), who will soon bite the dust and once he is out of the picture, the newly-widowed Alice decides to pick up her old passion to be a lounge singer to sustain the family, and brings their 11-year-old son Tommy (Lutter), to her hometown Monterey, California, to restart her long-abandoned career and at the same time, earns some money en route.The first stop is in Phoenix, Arizona, Alice is fortuitous enough to find a job in a local bar in the first day of her arrival, but an ill-fated romance with a testy nut-case Ben (Keitel), which halts suddenly in a violent episode, forces them to flee the town as soon as possible, here, Scorsese's regular Keitel, chews the scenery with another love-it-or-hate-it explosion which can be categorically repulsive to watch.The next stop is Tucson, where Alice accepts the job as a waitress in a local greasy spoon owned by Mel (Tayback), where she befriends a brusque fellow waitress Flo (Ladd, whose accessibly flamboyant turn wins her a first Oscar nomination), and encounters a divorced rancher David (Kristofferson), this time, it seems that she finds the right man (after a rambunctious interlude concerns their difference on her method of raising a child), but what about her original plan in her hometown, should she give it up or stick to her dream?Ellen Burstyn wondrously shows her chameleonic facades to unpick Alice's emotions and reactions in a full gamut, also nails the singing and piano-playing parts, her voice is unadorned, far from impressive, but pulses with a feeble quality which very much appropriate for Alice's lot. Alice's relationship with Tommy, is the most contentious takeaway of the film, it seems that their spontaneous dynamism which makes them interact more like friends than a mother and her son, creates many hearty moment with great comic response, but in the third act, when the overstatement of Tommy's spoilt nature is tapped as the ultimate igniter of the fall-out between Alice and David, it is totally at the expense of Tommy's characterisation, although Alfred Lutter III's naturalistic performance is gold, his Tommy turns out to be an utter brat, self-centred, petulant and annoying, so what is the point? One can only blame his upbringing, which must be Alice's fault, she spoils her son, and almost ravages a perfect relationship, but on the other hand, David, under his charming and avuncular miens, he is an abandoner at the first place, that's my major beef about the otherwise pretty scintillating script.The film starts with a sound-stage gambit, a homage to the old-time big studio production in its heyday, and apart from Scorsese's immaculate taste in music, his consistently fluid camera movement promises that he is more than just a hack-for-hire in the cutting-edge business, he is willing to go out on a limb if he is given the right material, and two years later, he would take audience's breath away with TAXI DRIVER (1976).

A beautiful, character driven story of self discovery with depth and surprises. A reminder of the challenges of raising child as a single mother while attempting to realize your own dreams. Ellen Burstyn gives a well deserved Academy Award winning performance. She plays a recent widow with a somewhat rebellious teenage son. Dianne Ladd and Kris Kristoffersen are superb in supporting roles. Surprise visits from Harvey Keitel and Jodie Foster enrich the story even more. The characters offer something that just about anyone can relate to. Scorcese weaved it all together simply and powerfully. It's a film not to miss.