Retrospective Film Review | Martin Scorsese

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) • 50 Years Later — forgotten dreams in Scorsese’s romantic drama

A recently-widowed woman is on the road with her precocious young son, determined to make a new life for herself as a singer.

Everything Alice (Ellen Burstyn) knows about her life is about to change. When her husband is killed in a car accident, she and her son Tommy (Alfred Lutter) leave their home in New Mexico, driving across the country. Alice wants to make it to Monterey, California, before what little is left of her savings runs out completely. She dreams of becoming a singer again, of being able to support herself and her son all on her own. And it’s in Monterey that she thinks she can do it. But there are so many hurdles, and Monterey so far away, that it seems that some dreams are destined to be forgotten.

Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is his only film with a leading female protagonist. Unsurprisingly, it’s also one of his gentlest, most human depictions of personal…