Alice in the cities
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Alice in the cities |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1974 |
| length | 107 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Wim Wenders |
| script |
Veith von Fürstenberg Wim Wenders |
| production |
Peter Genée , Joachim von Mengershausen |
| music |
Chuck Berry , The Can , Canned Heat |
| camera | Robby Muller |
| cut | Peter Przygodda |
| occupation | |
| |
| chronology | |
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Successor → |
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Alice in the Cities is a road movie by Wim Wenders from 1974 . The film is the first part of the feature film trilogy Road Movie . The second part, Wrong Movement, followed in 1975 and the third part, In the Course of Time, in 1976 .
action
The journalist Philip Winter brought along a stack of Polaroid photos instead of the agreed article from a multi-week trip through the United States and tried to put his client off, but was terminated. Financially burned down and already in a life crisis, he meets Lisa van Damm when booking his return flight to Germany, who wants to return to Germany with her nine-year-old daughter Alice after a failed relationship. They spend the night together, but in the morning Philip only finds a letter from Lisa telling him that he should fly to Europe alone with Alice, that she still has to take care of her ex and that she will come the next day.
Due to an air traffic controller strike, the two cannot fly to Germany, but only to Amsterdam , where they wait a few days for Lisa without success. Alice begins to befriend Philip after initial skepticism, while Philip sees the forced care as a nuisance, especially since his financial resources are running out.
Alice remembers a grandmother in Wuppertal , but not her name, so they go there at random and rent a car to drive all the streets until Alice recognizes the house. They are unsuccessful, so Philip, unsuccessful, turns Alice over to the police. But in the evening she returns to the hotel and informs him that the police have found out that her grandmother lives in the Ruhr area . When, after a long search, they find the right house on the basis of a photo that Alice has with her, it has other residents who do not know anything about Alice's grandmother. Little by little, Philip developed a great affection for Alice, who, unlike himself, had a strong, self-confident character.
Philip learns from a newspaper report that Alice actually escaped the police in Wuppertal and is now wanted. A police officer recognizes the two of them and tells Philip that contact has been made with Alice's mother in Munich and that Alice will be taken to the nearest train station. The film ends with Philip and Alice taking the train to Munich through the Rhine Valley and Philip realizes that he has an interesting story to tell.
background
The film was shot on 16 mm black and white film. The shooting took place in August / September 1973 in the US and Germany (mostly in Wuppertal ) instead.
The film also features the singer Sibylle Baier , who sings her song Softly , which appeared 32 years later on the CD Color Green (2006).
The work contains a cinematic quote from Dealer of the Four Seasons by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from 1972: In Alice in the Cities , too , the actor Hans Hirschmüller sits as a policeman at the typewriter in a police station.
Wim Wenders has a cameo in the film : In the scene that takes place in the South Carolina café, he is standing next to the jukebox .
Wenders received permission from Polaroid to use a prototype of the Polaroid SX-70 instant camera, which was newly developed at the time, in the film, where as a Philips camera it is an important prop and element of the storyline. A model and sufficient film material were made available to him - on the condition that the film would not be released until the camera was officially released. The film premiered two years after the SX-70 was released.
Reviews
“A sensitive picture of self-alienated life in our time; aesthetically and psychologically convincing, captivating through its truthfulness as well as through the parable power and charisma of the pictures. "
"The film deals with a profound topic with unexpected ease and is characterized by the parable power and the charisma of its black and white pictures, which are open to coincidences and details."
Awards and nominations
In 1974 the film was awarded the German Film Critics' Prize. In 2003, the Federal Agency for Civic Education, in cooperation with numerous filmmakers, created a film canon for work in schools and included this film in their list.
Web links
- Alice in the Cities in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Alice in the cities at filmportal.de
- Alice in the cities at the German Film Institute
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for Alice in the Cities . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , February 2009 (PDF; test number: 46 502 V / DVD / UMD).
- ↑ according to the text in the ARD-Werkschau on Wenders' 75th birthday
- ↑ Wim Wenders: Sofort Bilder, Schirmer / Mosel 2017, p. 122ff [1]
- ↑ Alice in the Cities. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 22, 2015 .
- ↑ arte.tv: Alice in the cities ( Memento from January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )