Name: ALICE IN THE CITIES (1974) – Wim Wenders' "Road Trilogy" Thursdays
Start: 2025-03-13T19:00:00-07:00
End: 2025-03-13T21:00:00-07:00
Location: Philosophical Research Society

$ALICE IN THE CITIES (1974) \u2013 Wim Wenders' "Road Trilogy" Thursdays$

The first of the road films that would come to define the career of Wim Wenders, an emotionally generous and luminously shot odyssey!
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WIM WENDERS’ ROAD TRILOGY
Before Paris, Texas, before Wings of Desire, in the 1970s Wim Wenders was among the first true international breakthrough artists of the revolutionary New German Cinema movement, a filmmaker whose fascination with the physical landscapes and emotional contours of the open road proved to be universal. In the middle of that decade, Wenders embarked on a three-film journey that took him from the wide roads of Germany to the endless highways of the United States and back again. Each starring Rüdiger Vogler as the director’s alter ego, Alice in the Cities, Wrong Move, and Kings of the Road are dramas of emotional transformation that follow their characters’ searches for themselves, all rendered with uncommon soulfulness and visual poetry.

On Thursdays this March, The Philosophical Research Society’s 7th House Screenings is proud to present Wenders’ earliest odes to that human desire to get behind the wheel and search for oneself, somewhere out there, beyond the horizon.

Thursday, 3/13, 7:00pm – Alice in the Cities (1974)
Thursday, 3/20, 7:00pm – Wrong Move (1975)
Thursday, 3/27, 7:00 – Kings of the Road (1976)

ALICE IN THE CITIES

The first of the road films that would come to define the career of Wim Wenders, the magnificent ALICE IN THE CITIES (1974) is an emotionally generous and luminously shot odyssey. A German journalist (Rüdiger Vogler) is driving across the United States to research an article; it's a disappointing trip, in which he is unable to to truly connect with what he sees nor accomplish anything but a series of Polaroids before disappointedly beginning his journey back home. Things change in New York, however, when he has no choice but to take a young girl named Alice (Yella Rottländer) with him on his return trip to Germany, after her mother (Lisa Kreuzer) – whom he has just met – leaves the child in his care. In Amsterdam, the mother then fails to appear as they agreed, so Winter and Alice set out to try to find Alice’s grandmother in the Ruhr region. During their search, their initial mutual dislike gradually transforms into a heartfelt affection.

Technically, Alice in the Cities is Wim Wenders’s fourth film, but he often refers to it as his first, because it was during this film that he discovered the genre of the road movie. (It would later become the first part of his Road Movie Trilogy, along with Wrong Move and Kings of the Road.) It was also his first film to be shot partly in the U.S. and the first to feature his alter ego, Philip Winter (Rüdiger Vogler). Alice is often compared with Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid. In 1974, it won the German Critics Prize.

Dir. Wim Wenders, 1974, 118 min, Germany, German w/ English Subtitles, Unrated (Recommended for Adult Audiences), Digital.

Text courtesy of Janus Films/Criterion Collection.

Special thanks to Sam Dinerstein of Janus Films.

Tickets: $10 (In Person Only Event)

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