Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is an enjoyable film with an Oscar-winning central performance by Ellen Burstyn as a woman and single mother struggling to make ends meet as a country-and-western singer after her husband is killed in a traffic accident.

With an affectionate depiction of South-Western U.S.A. beer-and-burger culture, unlike many of Scorsese's subsequent and better-known films, it’s heartfelt in depicting Alice’s attempts to make her way in the world but it doesn’t take itself too seriously – which is just the right combination to entertain yet at the same time touch us emotionally. Kris Kristofferson contributes his usual strong silent male persona whilst performances from Alfred Lutter as the son and Jodie Foster who would soon vault to fame as a child prostitute in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) which also starred Harvey Keitel who here plays a predatory male add to the overall ebullience, which is enhanced by the score of composer Richard LaSalle.

FYI: Francis Ford Coppola was in contention to direct but Burstyn opted for Scorsese

 

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