Alice in the Cities
| Alice in the Cities | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Wim Wenders |
| Produced by |
Peter Genée Joachim von Mengershausen |
| Written by | Wim Wenders Veith von Fürstenberg |
| Starring |
Rüdiger Vogler Yella Rottländer |
| Music by | Can |
| Cinematography | Robby Müller |
| Edited by | Peter Przygodda |
| Distributed by | Axiom Films (UK and Ireland) |
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Release date
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May 17, 1974 |
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Running time
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110 minutes |
| Country | West Germany |
| Language | German English Dutch |
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 Wim Wenders on Walker Evans, polaroids and road movies, 3:18, Museum of Modern Art
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Alice in the Cities (German: Alice in den Städten) is a 1974 German road movie directed by Wim Wenders. This was the first part of Wenders' "Road Movie trilogy" which included The Wrong Move (1975) and Kings of the Road (1976). The film is shot in black and white by Robby Müller with several long scenes without dialogue. The film's theme foreshadows Wenders' later film Paris, Texas.
German writer Philip Winter has missed his publisher's deadline for writing an article about the United States. Attempting to book a flight from New York City back to Germany, he meets a German woman, Lisa, and her young daughter, Alice, who are also trying to return home. After Lisa leaves Alice temporarily in Philip's care, she disappears to deal with a relationship she has recently terminated. Philip and Alice take a flight to Amsterdam on the expectation that they will meet Lisa there, only to find she never arrived to the airport.
When Alice is unwilling to stay in the Amsterdam airport alone while Philip leaves, the two decide to return to West Germany where Philip can deliver Alice to her grandmother's home. Unfortunately, Alice can't remember her grandmother's name or address, except that she may live in Wuppertal, the only clue being a photograph of her grandmother's front door with no house number and no one in the shot. After searching through Wuppertal, Alice admits her grandmother doesn't live there and she only wanted them both to stay in Amsterdam. Enraged, Philip turns Alice over to the police, but Alice escapes and returns to him with a new lead that her grandmother lives in Ruhr. The two begin to bond as they travel through Ruhr, and the search comes to an end when the police spot them and inform Philip that Lisa has been found.
According to Wenders, Alice in the Cities, his fourth feature-length film, came at a major turning point when he was deciding whether to remain a filmmaker. He felt that his first two features were too heavily indebted to John Cassavetes and Alfred Hitchcock, while his third was an ill-advised adaptation of The Scarlet Letter. Alice in the Cities was a conscious attempt to make something only he could do.
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Wikipedia