Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for Alice in the Cities (1974) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Rüdiger Vogler, Yella Rottländer, Lisa Kreuzer, Edda Köchl, Ernest Boehm, Sam Presti DIRECTOR: Wim Wenders CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robby Müller MUSIC: Irmin Schmidt PRODUCTION: Filmverlag der Autoren, WDR, Wim Wenders Stiftung

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for Alice in the Cities (1974). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Production

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.

The scenario of a young girl and a writer thrown together was inspired by Wenders' long-time collaborator Peter Handke's experience as a single parent. The influence of Handke's 1972 novel Short Letter, Long Farewell, also featuring an alienated German-speaker travelling across the United States, can be inferred from the film's use of clips from John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln, which is heavily referenced in the novel. The film can be seen as a response to Handke's novel.

While Wenders was preparing Alice in the Cities, a friend took him to a screening of Peter Bogdanovich's new film, Paper Moon (1973). To his horror, the film was very similar to this own, prompting him to call his production office and break the news that he was canceling the project, as he believed the film they were about to shoot "had already been made". Soon after, Wenders went to see Samuel Fuller, who had invited him to come visit after a prior encounter in Germany. Wenders mentioned to Fuller that he had just cancelled a project, and, upon finding out that Wenders had already secured the financing for the film, Fuller convinced Wenders that it was a mistake. After a few hours of discussion, Wenders realized he could still proceed, albeit with some extensive rewrites to differentiate Alice in the Cities from Paper Moon, and he called his production office to tell them that the film was back on.

The film was shot in close-to-chronological order—beginning in North Carolina, proceeding to New York, continuing in Amsterdam, and finishing in Germany—throughout the summer of 1973.

▸ Music & Score

The film was scored by the German band Can. When interviewed about the experience, Can's Irmin Schmidt stated that it was recorded by him, Michael Karoli, and Jaki Liebezeit, and that they were not able to see the film before recording the music. Instead, Wenders, who was very short on time, told them the film's story and then let them know what would and would not work as they came up with ideas and recorded, all over the course of one session.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: 1 win & 1 nomination total

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Alice in the Cities won the Best Film award at the German Film Critics Association Awards.

Nora Sayre and Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times wrote in 1974 that the film has "a great deal to say about Europe and America, about the exhaustion of dreams and the homogenization of nations, about roots and the awareness of time, about sterility and creativity, about vicarious and real adventure and, eventually, about the possibilities of the future".

In 1988, Jonathan Rosenbaum hailed Alice in the Cities as one of Wenders' strongest works, calling it a pungent hybrid of European and American elements "with its effective broodings over American and German landscapes and their ambiguous photographic representations".

Writing in 2008, Philip French of The Observer called Rottländer's performance as Alice "unforgettable". He went on to say that the film would not be able to be made today, "partly because of the invention of the mobile phone, partly because of our obsessive fear of anything that might be interpreted as paedophilia".

In an essay included with The Criterion Collection's 2016 release of Wenders' "Road Trilogy" on home video, American director Allison Anders described Alice in the Cities as "one of my very favorite films, and a guiding light", and praised Alice as "one of the screen's most multifaceted child characters".