Movie · 1974 · Romance, Drama · 1h 52m · PG · English
Curator score: 7.4/10 (86.6K ratings)
A movie for everyone who has ever dreamed of a second chance.
Overview
After her husband dies, Alice and her son, Tommy, leave their small New Mexico town for California, where Alice hopes to make a new life for herself as a singer. Money problems force them to settle in Arizona instead, where Alice takes a job as waitress in a small diner.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.4/10
IMDb: 7.3/10
Letterboxd: 3.81/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 78
TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
Martin Scorsese
Production
Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Ellen Burstyn, Alfred Lutter, Kris Kristofferson, Harvey Keitel, Diane Ladd, Lelia Goldoni, Billy Green Bush, Jodie Foster, Valerie Curtin, Vic Tayback, Murray Moston, Harry Northup, Lane Bradbury, Mia Bendixsen, Dean Casper, Marty Brinton, Ola Moore, Laura Dern, Tami Conner, David Adams
Curator Review
Verdict
A warm, bruised, and very human road movie about grief, self-invention, and the hard work of starting over. Ellen Burstyn gives it real emotional weight, and the film balances humor, loneliness, and hard-earned tenderness with unusual grace.
Best for
fans of character-driven 1970s dramas
viewers who like messy but hopeful stories about women rebuilding their lives
people drawn to grounded road movies and diner-set ensemble scenes
audiences interested in Scorsese outside his crime films
Skip if
you want a plot-heavy thriller or big dramatic twists
you dislike abrasive child characters or prickly domestic realism
you prefer polished, sentimental comfort over lived-in emotional roughness
Overview
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is one of Scorsese’s most surprising films: a small, observant drama that trades swagger for empathy. It follows a widow trying to keep herself and her son afloat, and the movie is strongest when it lets ordinary frustrations, work, and companionship reveal who Alice is becoming.
Worth noting
Ellen Burstyn anchors everything with a performance that feels exhausted, funny, guarded, and deeply alive. The film understands how survival can look like compromise, and how dignity sometimes arrives in tiny increments rather than grand breakthroughs.
Bottom line
What lingers most is the movie’s sense of community: the diner, the women Alice meets, the awkwardness of romance, the daily grind. It’s tender without being neat, and bruised without becoming bleak.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Karsten (4.5★) · 2191 likes
Ah yes, another gritty gangster flick from the one and only Martin Scorsese!!!
sydney (5★) · 1583 likes
my heart!! a beautiful and brutal and hilarious small story about finding the least offensive abusive asshole in a world so full of them that a "smile sweetie" feels like a gift...dunno if scorsese meant this to be a sweet, quiet tragedy and i don't know that he understands women and their romantic motivations, but miraculously he understands motherhood...tommy telling a bad joke so long and nonsensical that it makes alice cry from exhaustion is real as hell...
kayla (4★) · 1289 likes
Tommy might be in the top 5 most annoying kids I’ve ever seen in in a movie
Branson Reese · 994 likes
Not trying to start shit but it is unbelievably obvious who has and hasn’t seen this when they pop off about Scorsese.
Jamelle Bouie (4★) · 919 likes
A lovely and generous character study about a woman who had to reach middle age — and suffer tragedy — before she could become herself. If there’s a dominant theme, it is that even the best men can be (and are) burdens on the women around them.
1983 · Drama, Comedy · 2h 12m · PG · Curator 7.4/10 (123.2K ratings) · Where to watch: fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, MGM Plus
If you respond to emotional candor, maternal bonds, and humor braided with pain.
Topics
1970s drama, road movie, character study, female-led, working-class, bittersweet, slice of life, romantic realism, diner setting, coming-of-age later in life