Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Robert Getchell
Starring Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson
Release Date December 9th, 1974
The central conflict of Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, is a conflict between illusion and reality. The film is about the fictional life we create for ourselves as a protective case against harsh reality. It’s not just Alice who does this, we all do it to some extent. Life can be hard and re-framing negatives to positives can be helpful even as a self-deception. For Alice, the self-deceptions multiply in order to justify the choices she made in her life.
Alice’s first illusion comes in the form of the opening scene of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Scorsese decides at this moment to start the film as if it were an MGM musical from the golden age of such musicals. The scene is set on a very obvious Hollywood back-lot. The scene is lit in a rose color, evoking the rose colored glasses through which we often see our past. It’s never stated that this is Alice’s fantasy of what life was like for her as a child in Monterey but it doesn’t need to be spelled out. The style of the scene, the set, the idyll, they all communicate what needs to be communicated as we smash cut to Alice’s real life.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here.
