Alice
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alec Baldwin, Blythe Danner, Judy Davis, Mia Farrow, William HurtBrand: Alice
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-06-05
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Alice
Movie Review: PARABLE FOR OUR PRESENT FREE MARKET MATERIALIST AGE: WEALTH HOLDS NO POWER, ONLY LOVE IN POVERTY AND RENUNCIATION FOR OTHERS
Summary: 5 Stars
The US media cannot see it and thus will not tell you:
There is no joy in material wealth, only in absolute renunciation of wealth to give oneself to others in Love.
This is Allen's most well developed film technically with its stunning sets and exquisite cinematography, both by the best in the business of that time. The actors as well, from the briefest walk-on are top notch, and thus the New York review considers wasted. Not so; they are used exquisitely in perfect measure, and had no more to say. Brevity is the soul of wit, and their brief appearances merit another viewing. In fact for every reason this film demands another viewing, repeatedly.
In this film we find not only Allen's cinematic technical and directorial prowess on best display, but also his writing, which is profound and deeply moral and true and must be seen once more. There are two aspects to this writing, form and content. Like a modern novel, a form with which since Love and Death Allen has always wrestled, this film teaches you how to view itself. Like James Joyce's Ulysses (Gabler Edition), we are taught how to watch this film, and thus rewarded in further viewings. A professor here tells us how we read the voices in novels as interior monologues and ruminations whereas in film we see exterior speech to often devoid of the interior life.
This film is all about the interior life of the eternal soul as opposed to idle materialist empty orgies. We need that professor's indication to understand how to see this film, which begins with an interior musing over breakfast. See it again. The unsophisticated viewer might lose track of all which is going on; it took me several viewings, well rewarded to follow the thread all the way through, knowing there is still so much more to see.
The classical allusions in themselves are fascinating and deserving of a doctoral thesis. For instance the Baldwin brother appearance as a deceased first beau, perfectly played, resonantes with Joyce's the Dead in which another husband competes with a lost loved one. The hilarious scene in which a love potion mistakenly placed as nutmeg in the Christmas eggnog causes strangers to fall hopelessly in love with Alice reminds us of Romance of Tristan & Iseult as well as intriguing insight on the fatal and annoying aspects of celebrity in which perfect strangers fall confusedly and eternally in love with a cinematic fictional representation. One feels here that Allen and Farrow are making a true comment about strangers and other fans at Manhattan cocktail parties swearing their undying allegiance based on personal reaction to their anonymous art.
I had long thought the best Woody Allen films were his collaborations with Ms. Farrow; I had long thought that Broadway Danny Rose was their finest film, with its true moral and lesson for life: Forgiveness, Acceptance and Love. This film beats it in every way, and thus most other US cinema as well. Woody Allen appears on the Vatican's list of 100 best movies; I cannot recall if this is one, but it ought to be.
In fact comparing the two films, Danny Rose and ALice, we see the full range of Farrow's powers as an actress. There she plays a gun moll; here she is a perfect representation of a young lady who had spent years among the nuns, who had even entered the novitiate. Her every mannerism and her constantly polite and demure expression are exact, nearly painfully correct and essential to the power of this drama. See it again. Does she not remind you of people you knew?
And her representation of the emotionally devastating effects of adultery and its banal, destructive emptiness is true to life, something Hollywood never tells us. Cybill Shepherd guiding her to saleable stories ("no nuns") refelcts this as explicitly as the professor's lesson in voices.
Please see this movie. Without revealing any spoilers, let us simply say that Mother Theresa of Calcutta wins. See this film.
Summary of Alice
For 16 years, Alice Tate (Farrow) has been ignored by her husband (Hurt), spoiled by wealth, and tranquilized by boredom. But when she unexpectedly falls for a sexy musician (Mantegna) and impulsively consults a mysterious Chinese herbalist for advice, Alice begins a madcap journey into a strange new world of possibilities. But as she begins to realize who she is and what she values, Alice must also confront her deepest fears and decide how far she'll go for love and what she'll risk to change her destiny.Alice is one of Woody Allen's more grounded whimsies, though viewers with a low tolerance for feyness might miss it. Here goes Mia Farrow again as a nattering Manhattanite with a girlie-girlie voice and a well-to-do husband of 16 years (a stockbroker played by William Hurt) who doesn't always notice whether she's in the room. One day a back pain sends her up a dim staircase in Chinatown to see an acupuncturist (the valedictory role of the beloved Keye Luke). He has quite a bag of tricks--including hypnosis and a versatile assortment of herbal teas--and enough insight to recognize that Alice's troubles lie somewhere other than her sacroiliac. Under Dr. Yang's ministrations, Alice goes on a Wonderland voyage through her own life, fantasizing about having an affair with a dusky stranger (Joe Mantegna), flitting about Manhattan as an invisible spirit, and--most unlikely of all--talking straight with her various relatives, past and present.
Like so many Allen films, Alice wavers between scenes imagined with deftness and precision (like Farrow and Mantegna's astonished mutual seduction) and other scenes and notions that are merely touched upon and then abandoned before they can develop any rhythm and complexity, persuade you they were worth including, and justify the presence of so many nifty performers--Judy Davis, Judith Ivey, Gwen Verdon, Robin Bartlett, Alec Baldwin, Holland Taylor, Cybill Shepherd, Blythe Danner, Julie Kavner, Caroline Aaron--who mostly wink in and out again as cameos. Nevertheless, almost all Woody's looking glasses are worth passing through at least once. --Richard T. Jameson
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