gab-14712 While still not a masterpiece, it's definitely a very engaging film and Scorsese does an excellent job in getting the best out of his actors in his movie. What I really liked is how the film get you feeling at certain parts. Some parts of the film are incredibly funny (especially the scenes between mother and son), while others are intensely dramatic and tear-jerking. Scorsese does an excellent job in balancing those two tones, so it does not feel like the movie is all over the place. We get some magnificent performances out of everyone, especially from Ellen Burstyn who deserved her Oscar win for her portrayal of a mother trying to find independence and self-sufficiency.Before we delve deep into plot details, this film came out with a very important message: the representation of women in American society. Women, at the time, was still seen as housewives and not workers. They must obey their men without question and it is okay for men to beat or abuse them. That was pretty much the mindset of this era. Scorsese, screenwriter Robert Getchell, and Ellen Burstyn set out to make a film that shows women as man's equal. They deserve to have careers, to be paid as much as men do, to do anything a man can do. I think they succeed in bringing a clear message across. Even in today's world, where women are treated better, there are still some obstacles preventing women from achieving the status of men do. But this movie conveys a very important message about women, and about family. I liked the beginning of the film as it goes along with the themes of conceived concepts of what society thought of womanhood. There is this fake sunset and fake sense of happiness as it shows the women should be happy as the family's domestic servant. I almost thought I was watching The Wizard of Oz by mistake, but this scene gets its point across easily.Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn) finds herself an independent woman after many years in domesticity when her abusive husbands dies in a tractor-trailer accident. She decides to move to California with her eleven-year-old son named Tommy (Alfred Lutter) so she can begin a singing career. On their travels, they make lengthy stops in Arizona. They first stop in Phoenix, where she gets a job at a piano bar and dates a man named Ben (Harvey Keitel) who actually turns out to be married. They travel to Tucson where she puts her dreams of singing off to the side and becomes a waitress. There she meets a new friend, a fellow waitress named Flo (Diane Ladd), and more importantly a relationship with a farmer named David (Kris Kristofferson).The performances are all wonderful. Ellen Burstyn is totally deserving of all her accolades. She plays an ordinary mother with the decent looks and prosperous dreams (she's actually a terrible singer). But after years in domesticity, she finally finds herself in a position of independence. Her performance is very natural and realistic. Alfred Lutter was virtually an unknown and he never had much of an acting career after this film, but he was decent here. He could have been great, but sometimes he was annoying. Diane Ladd was wonderful as the waitress friend who is frank, honest, and loves sex. I liked Kris Kristofferson (or the Jeff Bridges lookalike) as the gentle farmer who is a handyman and he loves Alice from first sight. He loves her so much that he does anything he can to convince her to love him back and to show he's not a fake. Finally, Harvey Keitel, a mainstay for Scorsese, is only in the movie for brief but he does a good job in being one of those idiot men who cheats on their wives.Not only is the film about women, but it's about other relationships. There is the relationship between Alice and Flo that works out well. They have this completely honest discussion during this beach scene and it's a terrific scene to watch. There is the interesting relationship between Tommy and David. David tries to become a mentor in Tommy's life, but is unable to reach out to him. He tries his best to act like a father figure, but that is all but ruined during a catastrophic birthday party scene. There is also the relationship between Tommy and Audrey (played by the young Jodie Foster.) Audrey becomes a friend to Tommy, but she is an outcast and she convinces Tommy to break the law (when it comes to stealing candy bars, etc). All these relationships have effective dynamics to them and are truly believable.Alice Doesn't Live Here Before has had its supporters and critics within the feminism movement. Some people say this film is overly feminist while others support the messages of the film. I, myself do find the themes to be powerful. Sometimes it feels like I'm being beaten over the head with these feminism issues in the movie, but they are very important. It has gotten better for women, but it is still not good enough. Fortunately, I am a man who believes every woman is my equal. The performances are all excellent, and the film is written very well. The pacing needs to be a little better, but overall it's well-directed. Martin is learning very fast. Just wait till you see the remarkable Taxi Driver. I loved how he interjected a soundtrack full of rock'n'roll tunes. It's nice to hear songs from Mott the Hoople and Elton John. This is a solid road-trip dramedy that highlights a very important issue.My Grade: B+

LuvSopr This film was a rarity for the time in that it focused exclusively on a woman's point of view - a woman who is attractive, but not a bombshell, a woman who is flawed while still being a decent person, a woman who has no idea how to raise her mixed-up son, but does her best, a woman who has the same harmless delusions we all have, a woman who has been so constrained by society's idea of happiness, but still can't resist wanting to find love and fulfillment with men. The next year, Ellen Burstyn, who won a well-deserved Oscar for her work in the role, would go on television complaining about the nominees for Best Actress, stating that they were supporting roles in a lead category. Last year, Diane Ladd, so superb as Flo and in many other roles, criticized the Academy for putting lead actresses in supporting roles. Sadly, if anything never changes in Hollywood, it's poor material for women. Scorsese made sure viewers knew ADLHA was not a "soap opera" (even though both Ellen Burstyn, via her old name, and Diane Ladd both cut their teeth in daytime drama before moving to Hollywood), but the core is not far off the best of what soaps used to be - an exploration of the life of a "normal" woman, her day-to-day struggles, her haunted psyche, and her search for a better life. As soaps no longer have any interest in this type of woman (yet another reason they have faded into irrelevance), it's up to movies like this to live on.What to make of Alice herself? While the opening scene gets it a little wrong in its attempt to shock us (a fake-Hollywood, Wizard-of-Oz-esque backdrop with a little girl who curses to remind us this is no fairy tale), the next scenes strongly establish what makes Alice such a refreshing character, how she is the everyday woman, a Socorro housewife, who is torn between wanting more for herself and barely managing to even cope with what she has. The scene where, after Tommy goads her husband into yet another outburst, she flings the doors of her dining room open and shouts, "Socorro sucks!," is a real shock to the system, yet it makes you laugh, and feel relieved. You're reminded that even if this isn't real life, you know Alice, and you care about her. You see her tease Tommy, who is about to implode from a father he both loves and hates. You see her banter with her best friend (another reflection of soap operas), a woman who, in a poignant moment before the departure for Phoenix, she realizes she will likely never have contact with again. While Alice, in a sense, is stuck in hell, the movie doesn't completely demonize her husband, doesn't make him a faceless droid of the liberation movement - he tries, but he's utterly helpless to understand his wife. The moment where she casually says she'd be better off without and then learns of his death, crying out, "God forgive me," is one of the film's most harrowing.ADLHA has a harder edge than the sitcom it spawned in many ways - Tommy is a real brat, and not a TV-cute brat (likely why he was replaced so quickly on the sitcom), and rather than characters like Vera being dizzy but heartwarming creatures Alice takes into her heart, she's a space cadet, one, in an unpleasant but realistic enough scene, is openly laughed at (along with her father) by our noble heroine. And Diane Ladd's Flo is just a bit less heartwarming, a bit coarser than her TV version (superbly played by Polly Holliday). You get a warm welcome from her, but you are also on guard, as Alice is. One of the film's best moments is when an overwhelmed Flo spews profanity at the diner patrons, and Alice, astonished, convulses into raucous laughter that Flo initially mistakes as sobbing. From then on, they're firm friends. Only Vic Tayback, basically playing a Mel who can say blue language, closely resembles his TV counterpart.Ironically, the sitcom gets one thing right that, for me, always keeps this film from being what it could have been, in that it scraps the relationship between Alice and David, and focuses more on her relationships with the women at the diner. While everything about Alice and David makes "sense," and I respect Scorsese and Burstyn for not bowing to the idea that a woman must be alone to be strong (as Pauline Kael said about the ending of An Unmarried Woman, who could believe anyone wouldn't go away with Alan Bates???), David feels like he is from another movie, and I never can invest in the chemistry between Kristofferson and Burstyn. Jodie Foster, on the verge of stardom, pops up as a friend for Tommy. She also feels like she's from another movie, and is an odd mix with Tommy, although the scene where (after his mother kicks him out of the car for being mouthy and hostile) he tracks her down and they get drunk is pretty good. In terms of romantic attachments, Alice - and the film - peak during far her brief turn with Harvey Keitel, who plays a charmer she knows is not going to be good for her, but has no idea just how bad he will turn out to be. Indeed, this portion of the movie - when she and Tommy are at their most broken and desperate, fleeing the hotel with every possession they own - is viscerally good, and is the part of the film that always stays with me most. So, while certain parts of the movie make it what it is for me, it's still a very good, very unique, very modern film throughout. Give it a try.

lasttimeisaw 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).

ElMaruecan82 Alice is a pearl … she's the kind of everyday heroine the world needs today … in French, they call them "mere courage" meaning literally "mother bravery" and God, I respect this woman, and I respect Martin Scorsese, the one who made the ultimate guy movies, for having dedicated such a great film for women, those misunderstood wonders of the world that we, men, use, to make ourselves feel like men … God bless you, Marty ! and Bravo, for Ellen Burstyn, for having portrayed such a character! Alice, what a wonderful name, she reminds me of a poor little girl plunged in a surrealistic world where everything seems against her … I don't know if it's an homage to Lewis Carrol's titular heroine, the fact is that this film is a psychological road movie in the soul of a fragile creature that has a bad day, a long bad day, that tunnels us in the deepest fears and sentimental problems that a woman in the middle of the 70's could encounter ... and I sincerely hoped, all through the film, that this tunnel would end in a light of hope … Light is not something this movie lacked, Ellen Burstyn's smile is the sunshine that enlightened my heart, and made me wish that her dream to become a singer would finally be true … but this is a dream, and she's Alice. Marty, I know you're smart enough, and I didn't expect a happy ending, nor a cynical one, this is a movie about women, about mothers, and I'm glad that you handled it with the respect we all owe to our mothers, our women … Not that I'm surprised, but I was worried, and I'm glad that all ended that ended well for her … The story of Alice started with a homage to the "Wizard of Oz", a nice touch to remind us that sometimes our dreams are part of a sort of surrealistic world that doesn't take today's harshness into consideration … not surprising though, that 27 years later, we find Alice as a devoted mother trying to balance between an annoying but harmless little brat and a dominating husband figure … from the beginning, we understand one thing, that dear Alice needs a break, but need in Scorsese's movies are not necessarily fulfilled, not without the touch of fate anyway, the same touch that decided to precociously make Alice, a widow ...But a widow is not the character that suits her, she basically can't live without a man, why? Because despite everything, this is not a feminist movie, it's about reality, idealization leads to disappointment while realism provides hope, the same hope that guided Alice to look for a better future for her, and her child … "mere courage" again. Crisis and opportunity are almost synonyms in the world of Alice, she's always about to breakdown BUT never does. That's the very aspect of her personality, she's so fragile that she needs a man, but not enough to become dependent.Marty, you were a precocious genius, because even though you probably didn't understand women … who did and who will, anyway? … You directed a movie with all the humility in your heart and let women guide you, to make us understand the truths that lie beneath the beauty … they can be singers, wives, widows, or waitresses, these poor little souls are the greatest thing God ever created. And WE, we, men, don't deserve them.Indeed, what I learned from Alice, Bea, or Flo is that there's a whole universe inhabiting these hearts, and we try to gain self-respect, we try to affirm our masculinity in the most cowardly way, by reducing to dominated objects those creatures who just want to be protected, understood, loved, and we're too weak to admit how needy we are … We all need women … and I'm glad, you Marty, didn't caricature the purpose of the film, by making all the men equal to Donald, a decent but rude guy, or Ben, Harvey Keitel, a brief but powerful performance. We have something in common with them, but there's an inner David in us, Kris Kristofferson as the man who redeemed us all.David is the good guy, with a living and a need of love, no surprise he immediately felt for Alice … but there was the boy, the product of a spoiled education worsened by the absence of a fatherly figure, this could have lead to the worst clashes, but Marty's film is more lighthearted than what I'd thought, and it's better this way. It's not a female version of Taxi Driver, despite the presence of a superb Jodie Foster, in a promising performance. It's an inspiring film where Alice will finally have the break she always dreamed of.Alice, after facing so much brutality, and others expressions of masculine weakness, will finally find the strength in its most honest and even clumsy way, but clumsy for a man almost means sincere … and I was glad that despite everything, she ended up, with David … will she become a singer? Will she fulfill her dreams ? At least she's with a man ... but this is not a male victory, the real winner is Alice and no one else.This is a movie about women, but made by a man and it couldn't have been more honest and sincere about the way we treat our wives and mothers … we're bad, we're flawed, but God knows we need them … the movie is like a humble cinematic apology, from one of the greatest directors of his generation, and allow me to be among those who say : "Sorry for the way we treat you". I love your films, Marty, I loved Alice and God knows how I love women … and Mom, especially