"Is it sexy?"
"Sexy for Phoenix.."
Martin Scorsese’s forth picture and the forth in my Scorsese in Sequence series is Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Alice
Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn) is a ex lounge singer turned housewife who lives with her
pre teen son Tommy (Alfred Lutter) and her emotionally cold and distant husband
Donald (Billy Green Bush). After Donald is killed while driving his truck Alice takes the opportunity to travel through the South
Western States of America in
search of work as a singer in order to get to Monterey where she hopes to settle and
rebuild her singing career.
This is Scorsese’s first film that is overtly comedic. While
each of his three previous films had occasional funny moments, Alice ’ is the first Scorsese film that I’d
describe as a drama-comedy. This doesn’t mean that it’s a laugh a minute
popcorn film though. Like all of his funnier films (The King of Comedy, After Hours) there is still a strong dramatic
thread to it and it can be sad and even distressing in places.
The film opens with an idealised view of Alice ’s childhood in which she is stood
outside a house, clutching a doll. This scene is quite surreal and feels like a
homage to the Wizard of Oz. The set
features obvious fake backdrops and what looks like a flimsy set house and is
filmed with a deep red filter. Unlike Oz where
Dorothy wants to escape Kansas it feels like Alice is looking back on
her childhood wishing she could escape her adult life and return to that
idealised red world.