A View Through Rose-Coloured Glasses Opens Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Opening Act: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Welcome to Opening Act, a breakdown and analysis of the greatest opening scenes in film history. Today Martin Scorsese's 1974 drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (hencefore referred to simply as Alice) starring Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson. Neither of them appear in the opening minutes though. Instead we are treated to trip down memory lane to Alice's upbringing in Monterey, Calfornia. She has happy memories of her childhood, when she was full of hopes and dreams and was generally happy. Instead she has found herself a thirty-something housewife married to an unloving truck driver raising a twelve year old son in New Mexico. But we don't know any of that yet. Instead, Scorsese opens the film with the only flashback he uses to establish Alice's desires to move back to Monterey.

The plot of Alice is about Alice's efforts to move herself and her son to Monterey and start a career singing after the untimely death of her truck driving husband. This desire to reach the endpoint stems from her memories of childhood happiness growing up on a farm in California. The nostalgic plunge into the past opens the movie with a countryside bathed in red. The red of passionate love. Alice Faye's "You'll Never Know" plays on the soundtrack with lyrics of unrequited love across a separation. Faye sings about a man leaving her but Scorsese co-opts the message and uses it for Alice's love for her childhood home. The idyllic pastoral life is shown as an inset into the full frame, as a memory in a box, safe from the influences of the outside world. Alice's childhood is preserve in time like a classic work of art and just like a classic work of art, the influence of the image's creator is apparent, altering the realism into a sort of idealized picture.

"I can do that better"

A young Alice walks up the path towards the farm and abruptly cuts off Alice Faye, declaring herself to be a better singer. This plays into Alice's desire to be a singer and her confidence in her abilities (a confidence which wanes as an adult even as her talent grows). This is also the first crack in the veneer of perfection in this memory. Alice herself aims to improve on the world she grew up in. She takes up the song before her mother calls her to come inside. The tone of the call is warm and maternal, full of love, but the words are harsh and violent. Alice is promised a beating if she fails to come inside at this instant.

Any sense of warmth and peace with the farmhouse scene is abruptly ended on the last line of "You'll Never Know" as the word "now" is repeated in a cacophonous chorus of modulated voices. Perhaps the past isn't always so great. Even the safety of the memory box is attacked as the image literally fades into the black background, giving way to the harsh realities of modern life.

But here's the thing about Alice's memories of the past. They are her escape, the last semblance of all her young, innocent hope and dreams. She is thirty-five, trapped in a loveless marriage with a pre-teen kid. While she loves her son as much as any parent, he can still annoy her at times and is often a source of tension with the men in her life. The simple country life is her escape and when given the opportunity following her husband's death she pursues the only happiness she knows. 

Alice isn't a film about disappearing into your past though and neither is it a film about the falsehoods of nostalgia. It is a film about the struggle for happiness and finding a place in the world. Alice doesn't make it to Monterey but is happy at the end of the film. It is about the people you surround yourself with, the people you depend on and rely on. It is about the forgiveness of faults and the growth which accompanies human compassion. It is a film about the charms of life, the high and lows and everything in between. It isn't about going back, it is about going forwards because that is where you will find your place. As Alice says at the end of the movie, "I mean if I'm going to be a singer, I could be a singer anywhere."


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