Film Screening: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

An underrated Martin Scorsese gem, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974, PG) is a warm, gritty romantic drama that follows a newly widowed woman and her son on a journey across the Southwest, led by one of Ellen Burstyn’s toughest performances. After her husband dies, Alice and her son Tommy leave their small New Mexico town and head for California, where Alice hopes to make it as a singer. Money problems force them to settle in Tucson instead, where Alice takes a job as a waitress in a diner. She intends to stay in Tucson just long enough to make the money they need to continue on to California, but her plans change when she begins to fall for a rancher named David (Kris Kristofferson). Realistic, finely observed and lived-in, Scorsese’s film shows he can capture the Southwest as vibrantly as the mean streets of New York, and it’s a showcase for the powerful work of his two lead actors. The diner scenes gave us Vic Taback as grouchy cook Mel, along with fellow waitresses Flo and Vera, characters that lived on in the long-running sitcom spinoff Alice.