Director: Wim Wenders/Starring: Rudiger Vogler, Yella Rottlander and Lisa Kreuzer
I have had the very good fortune to catch a Wim Wenders retrospective at the local cinema and though I've seen a number of the German director's films over the years, one I hadn't had the pleasure to see previously is Alice in the Cities. Wender's gem from 1974 is not a film that comes to mind when his oeuvre is usually celebrated or discussed but it contains many visual and dramatic elements that would come to characterize his later work. As in this and later films, we find restless, peripatetic souls, wandering the physical landscape, searching for something abstract; a meaningful connection to the world or perhaps something more personal; a rapprochement with estranged loved ones.
In Alice, a German journalist named Philip (Rudiger Vogler) is diverted from his goal of returning to his native land from New York by a young girl whose mother has temporarily placed her in his care. Unable to find a connecting flight to Germany, he and the woman; a fellow country-person named Lisa (Lisa Kreuzer) become kindred, home-bound souls who find their only way to their homeland is via a non-connecting flight to Amsterdam. Philip's decision to return home is borne of an unfortunate meeting with his angry American editor, who is incensed that an overdue article has yet to be submitted. After looking over and rejecting Philip's random Polaroid shots of his American travels, the editor sends him away after exacting a promise that the article will be completed when he returns Germany.
Meanwhile, Lisa, fresh from a break-up--one among several in her recent past--intends to return home with her daughter Alice (Yella Rottlander) but warms to Philip as their plight becomes a shared ordeal.
But before they can catch their next day flight, Lisa entrusts Alice to Philip; hoping to reconcile with her boyfriend before returning home. With the understanding that Lisa will meet Alice and Philip in Amsterdam, the two parties part. What is supposed to be a temporary arrangement becomes prolonged when Lisa fails to meet them. With meager, economic means and a deadline looming, Philip is nevertheless committed to waiting with Alice, though they linger for a few days before setting off for Germany, where they hope to find her grandmother. With little or no useful information as to where the grandmother might reside, Philip can only draw on Alice's vague, childhood memories as the means to a viable lead. In doing so, the two begin an offbeat Odyssey that leads them on the road through small, German towns in all manner of conveyances. In their meanderings, the two learn to tolerate one another, become mutually sympathetic and eventually glean something meaningful and ultimately joyful from their haphazard union.
Throughout the film, Philip's Polaroid camera becomes a device with which to help him retain images from his travels but, as he unfortunately discovers, his photos prove to be frustratingly inadequate surrogates for his deep, visual impressions.
In seeking overnight shelter the night before his departure from New York City, a friend summarily rebuffs his pleas but listens to Philip's laments about his travels; how everything "seems the same after New York City," the monotony of motel rooms; the "sickening radio" and "inhuman television" and how it all "almost made me lose my senses." She explains that his senses and sense of identity had already been lost long before and his pictures serve as feeble proof of his objective sensual experience. But as the story unfolds, we see the the snapshots become less frequent, particularly during his time with Alice.
During their time together, wandering from town to town, Wenders shows us not only the road's poetic potential but also the more mundane moments, as Alice's frequent bouts of hunger and thirst begin to try Philip's patience.
An attempt to locate Alice's grandmother by leaving her with the police comes to naught as she escapes their care to rejoin Philip. With an endless capacity for patience, Philip drives Alice along, hoping to find her grandmother while following the flimsiest leads that often lead nowhere. But as we see, the journey is important for what comes of the two travelers time together. For Alice, her seemingly simple quest may fulfill wishes for an absent father while Philip's problem demands a more convoluted solution.
In an American version of this film, the story would morph into something heartwarming and sentimental and young Alice would become cute and lovable and most likely precocious, while Philip's abstract quest would become nothing more than a man's need for family or a trite lesson about living-life-to-the-fullest; hackneyed ideas commonly pedaled in Hollywood films. But Wenders never lets sentimentality creep into his story nor does Alice become a cutesy little waif. Nevertheless, it is touching to see Philip become a kind of father who cares enough for Alice to drive hither and thither and go to nigh any length to help her find her grandmother.
The ending is upbeat but hardly cloying. It seems the most significant photographs taken in the film aren't from Philip's Polaroid collection but from photo booth shots of he and Alice together. So what is Wenders' film itself? Is it proof of our sensual experience or is it the photo-booth pictures; a document of something more meaningful? Or both?
With Alice in the Cities, Wenders reaches for poetry and finds it in an unassuming story. Rudiger Vogler and Yella Rottlander make a memorable pair of itinerants; their outstanding performances and Wenders' camera, which transports us from Texas to New York to Amsterdam to rural and urban Germany, make for an intoxicating road-trip. The stark, black and white visuals compliment Wender's brand of realism, which sometimes carries a tinge of the surreal. The film is easily as good as Wenders later films, which tend to garner more praise and attention.
For Wenders, the road is revelation; a means to free oneself from psychic manacles but who one shares one's travels with may be the most important aspect of the journey. Philip's time on the road becomes significantly more meaningful when Alice becomes becomes his sidekick.
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