“It's extremely rare to find movies this open-ended and assured, lucid and lyrical, tender and truthful, anchored in the here and now yet timeless.” - Michael Almereyda, The Criterion Channel
“A work of sprawling emotional breadth, suggesting that one possible way of truly finding oneself is to tend to another's needs.” - José Teodoro, Film Comment
“This bittersweet gem from 1974 delivers an ambling tale of loss and estrangement which rings as true today as it would have more than 30 years ago.” - David Jenkins, Time Out London
Wednesday, December 9, 6:00 p.m. | A scruffy man sits beneath a pier along the Carolina coast, beatifically frowning at a row of Polaroid photos. With this unforgettable opening image, Wim Wenders delivered a statement encapsulating the issues that would fuel the next 10 years of his filmmaking. The director grew up in postwar West Germany, haunted and enraptured by the omnipresence of American culture, and obsessed with ways of capturing reality. The first of Wenders' series of "road movies" (he'd later name his production company for the genre), ALICE concerns a depressed German writer (Rüdiger Vogler) adrift in the States, here to complete an assignment; instead he compulsively snaps Polaroids which compare unfavorably to life itself. (Gabriel Wallace, Chicago Film Society) 16mm print from the Chicago Film Society (gift of Richard White), permission Janus Films
Preceded by: Chuck Berry clip reel (5 min, 16mm from Heather McAdams)
Awards & Nominations
1974 Chicago International Film Festival - Official Selection
1974 New York Film Festival - Official Selection
1976 German Film Critics Association Awards - Winner, Best Film
Chicago Film Society Presents | Ongoing Series
Founded by projectionists in 2011, the Chicago Film Society promotes the exhibition and preservation of film in context. CFS screenings provide access to the restoration efforts of archives, studios, and private collectors, the work of artists exploring the film medium today, and the experience of seeing film projected live in a theater, with an audience. As physical artifacts, the film prints we show hold the stories told by films—but also the stories of the industries that produced them, the labs that printed them, the places where they were exhibited, and the people who watched them. Through screenings, writing, film preservation projects, and workshops, CFS works to make all of this context visible and accessible to the public. Learn more about Chicago Film Society at chicagofilmsociety.org.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu