Year: 1974
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, Alfred Lutter, Harvey Keitel, Diane Ladd, Lelia Goldoni, Billy Green Bush, Jodie Foster, Valerie Curtin, Vic Tayback
Director: Martin Scorsese
Nominations: Best Actress (Burstyn), Best Supporting Actress (Ladd), Best Original Screenplay
I'll admit something; until this weekend, I primarily knew this movie as the basis for the sitcom Alice, which I caught several times in reruns back in the 90's and thought was cute enough. And of course as the film that won Ellen Burstyn her Oscar.
So if you're like me, and are more familiar with the sitcom than the film, do yourself a favor and forget everything you know about the sitcom before you sit down to watch. I did not, and the film I saw could not have been more different than the TV series. It would be similar to if Robert Altman's M*A*S*H had been a dark, gritty war film like Saving Private Ryan. Okay, maybe not that dark. There are several light-hearted moments in this film, but a sitcom premise it is decidedly not.
Ellen Burstyn plays Alice Hyatt, a suburban housewife to rude, boorish truck-driver Donald (Billy Green Bush) and mother to mouthy little Tommy (Alfred Lutter), who had aspirations of being a singer, and later in the film, when asked why she gave that dream up, her reply is "I got married", said in a tone that suggests that alone explains it. She does later admit that her husband put the kibosh on her dreams by saying no wife of his was gonna get pawed by drunks as she sings in some bar, but she says all this in a tone that says "husbands, you know? What can you do?"
So that by itself communicates just how much times have changed even since the 70's, an era that was noted for a rise in progressivism and women's lib.
Donald is literally just a shade less than a domestic abuser. We never see him actually hit Alice or little Tommy, but when Tommy replaces the sugar for Donald's coffee with salt, Donald first yells at Alice, asking "what the hell did you do to the coffee?" and when he realizes what Tommy has done, chases him out of the house in a frightening scene. Alice later makes excuses for him to her friend Bea (Lelia Goldoni). Oh, yes, the 70's still had a lot of work ahead of them before women realized men like Donald are bad news.
But an accident takes out Donald and leaves Alice a single mother with no job and no experience outside of being a singer. She cries when she's first told of the accident, but even Tommy later notices how short a time seems to go by before she seems to have made her peace with it. She decides now's the time to take her chance at becoming a professional singer, packing herself and Tommy up and heading west, intending to arrive in Monterey to hit the big time. Meanwhile, she'll hire herself out as a bar singer in the bigger cities on her way.
First stop: Phoenix, where she actually does get a job singing and playing piano in a bar, but she also takes up with rakish younger man Ben, who we in the new 10's know is a bad man because he's played by Harvey Keitel in a supporting role. It turns out that not only is he married (and his wife is expecting) but he's also dangerous; violently abusive and potentially murderous. This scene was apparently so traumatizing to Burstyn that her reaction to Ben in this scene is not acting, nor did it stop once "cut" was called. I can see why. Keitel was only becoming a well-known actor by that point but he would make his career playing men who aren't very nice, and this scene is probably why. Even Scorsese was scared of him after that!
So, good-bye Phoenix and hello Tuscon, where Alice, now out of gas and out of options, takes a job at a diner and enrolls Tommy in school. And here is where the sitcom premise arose from; Alice was about a single-mom waitress and her pals at the diner. In this movie, the diner is just another hurdle on Alice's road to trying to figure out who she is and what she wants. She tries (with varying success) to get along with her new co-workers, brassy southern belle Flo (Diane Ladd) and spacey Vera (Valerie Curtin), as well as her grumpy boss Mel (Vic Tayback, who would reprise his role on the sitcom), while being romanced by regular customer David (Kris Kristofferson), a farmer and divorcee who would be good for her, or could be just another fatal attraction to add to the list.
I understand that Ellen Burstyn was attracted to this project because having just come off playing a woman with a literal demon for a child, she wanted to do a realistic project displaying the trials of the modern woman. And boy, did she. Alice's struggles are palpable, and Burstyn portrays this all so well that we feel every inch of what she's going through. Alice isn't some larger-than-life person; she's just a mom who's doing her best. She's not a great mom, and in some cases not even a good one, and her kid isn't the typical precocious Hollywood youngster but a mouthy little brat who drives everyone around him crazy. I'd be annoyed with him myself if it weren't so obvious that the film wants me to be. Alfred Lutter's performance is so natural that it's hard to believe they didn't just let the camera role while he annoyed his costars. If there's a child performer here who's awkward and stilted, it is, strangely enough, a young Jodie Foster, who seems very conscious that she's being filmed. Lutter doesn't seem like he's acting. Foster definitely does. Makes you wonder why one would keep acting well into adulthood and win two Oscars and the other wouldn't survive the 70's with an intact acting career.
The portrait of mother and son was one of the most honest I've seen in a film. He's not a sarcastic young genius and she's not a the patient, saintly mom who always knows what to say. Later in the film, Kristofferson calls her out on her apparent inability to discipline him and let him do whatever he wants. She's angry and hurt in this scene, and she should be, and she doesn't really have a realization later that he's right, yet he's still not shown as the jerk that criticized her parenting.
I've heard some critiques on the 1974 Oscars saying that Burstyn won this year because the Academy couldn't decide between Faye Dunaway in Chinatown and Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence. I have yet to see A Woman Under the Influence but I've seen Chinatown and, not to take anything away from Ms. Dunaway, but as far as I'm concerned, between the two of them, Burstyn is the clear winner here. We'll discuss this more once I get to this category but right now we're on the supporting side.
Diane Ladd doesn't show up until the latter half of the movie (in fact, the diner itself doesn't), but once she does, she leaves a huge impression. Once again, forget the sitcom portrayal of her by Polly Holiday (as funny as it was). Here, she's a foul-mouthed yet supportive mother type, willing to be whistled at and flirted with, but won't take your crap. She never once says "kiss mah grits!", the character's catchphrase on the show, but she does say things like "Mel, why don't you give yourself a jerk job in a paper sack and get off my ass, would ya?" or when Mel demands to know where Vera is, she yells "She went to shit and the hogs ate her!" It's tempting to write her off as vulgar comic relief, but she's also the one there for her when Alice needs her, even after Alice openly tells her "I don't like you". Ladd manages to go over the top while still reminding you of someone you might have met; in fact the entire movie keeps the realism levels high while still managing to wow you with its acting. Ladd made me laugh out loud several times, but also brought a pathos to the role that humanized her.
Well, okay, about that realism, maybe not all the movie is. In a very inventive opening, we see Alice as a little girl, coming home to her farmhouse singing "You'll Never Know" from Hello, Frisco, Hello to her doll, but not idly; actually trying to sing like a professional. The scene is framed and filmed like a classic from the 40's, even opening with a credits sequence right out of Michael Curtiz's dreams. Then her mother threatens to beat her if she doesn't come in for supper right now, and young Alice tells her doll that one day she'll be a singer and "anybody who tells me I won't can blow it out their ass". Fade almost immediately to "present day" and "All the Way to Memphis" by Mott the Hoople blares over the soundtrack. I loved this juxtaposition, and the undercutting of the idyllic scene of yesteryear with the vulgarity that reminds us the 40's weren't really like what the Hayes Code tried to suggest they were.
In conclusion, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is a deserved American classic that you need to see. Just don't mistake it for the sitcom.
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