Lisa - Alice's Mother: What are you writing?

Philip 'Phil' Winter: The inhuman thing about American TV is not so much that they hack everything up with commercials, though that's bad enough, but in the end all programmes become commercials. Commercials for the status quo. Every image radiates the same disgusting and nauseated message. A kind of boastful contempt. Not one image leaves you in peace, they all want something from you.
Alice: Do you think he's my father?
Philip 'Phil' Winter: Talking to yourself... Actually, it's more like listening than talking.
Publisher: You've been on the road for four weeks now and all you've got is a bunch of pictures. You were supposed to write something. I could have gotten pictures somewhere else. You were supposed to write about the American landscape. I've already gotten three telexes from the publisher in Munich and I look like an idiot. So what do I do now?

Philip 'Phil' Winter: I'm not done yet. That's all.
Philip 'Phil' Winter: When you drive around America, something happens to you. The images you see change you.
Lisa - Alice's Mother: Would you wait with us? Otherwise, I don't know how I'll stand it.

Philip 'Phil' Winter: I can do that, but I'm not very entertaining.

Lisa - Alice's Mother: You could be mute for all I care.
Philip 'Phil' Winter: I got completely lost. It was a horrible journey. Once you leave New York City nothing changes anymore. It all looks the same. You can't imagine anything anymore. Above all, you can't imagine any change. I became estranged from myself. All I could imagine was going on and on like this forever. Some nights, I was sure I would go back the next morning. But then I'd keep on driving, listening to that vulgar radio and every night in a motel that looked just like all the others before. I'd watch that barbarous television. I didn't know what hit me.

Angela - Friend in New York: You haven't known that for a long time now. You don't have to travel across America for that. That happens when you lose all sense of your own self. And you lost that long ago. That's why you always need proof, proof you still exist. Your stories and your experiences - you treat them like raw eggs. As if you were the only one to experience things. And that's why you keep taking pictures. They're something you can hold on to, more evidence that it was you who saw these things.
Philip 'Phil' Winter: Taking pictures is a way of proving things. Waiting for the image to develop, I was often filled with a strange unease. I could hardly wait to compare the picture with reality. But comparing them wouldn't reassure me either. As the still images were always overtaken by reality...

Angela - Friend in New York: You can't stay here.

Philip 'Phil' Winter: I photographed even more obsessively.

Angela - Friend in New York: You're really beside yourself!

Philip 'Phil' Winter: That's why I only took Polaroids...

Angela - Friend in New York: I don't want you to stay here, understand?

Philip 'Phil' Winter: What? Are you serious?

Angela - Friend in New York: Yes, my friend. I can't help you.
Lisa - Alice's Mother: I can't sleep with you. But, I'd like to share the bed with you.
Alice: Do you like flying?

Philip 'Phil' Winter: No.

Alice: I like the food. It's nicely wrapped up.
Alice: What is it?

Philip 'Phil' Winter: Fear.

Alice: What kind of fear?

Philip 'Phil' Winter: Are there different kinds?

Alice: Yes.

Philip 'Phil' Winter: I'm afraid of fear.

Alice: Why are you afraid of fear?

Philip 'Phil' Winter: Yes. Why?
Chuck Berry, Himself: [singing] Long distance information give me Memphis, Tennessee, Help me find the party trying to get in touch with me, She could not leave her number but I know who placed the call, My uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall. Help me information to get in touch with my Marie...
Alice: What will you do in Munich?

Philip 'Phil' Winter: I'll finish writing that story.

Alice: Your scribbling?

Alice in the Cities Quotes

Extended Reading

Alice in the Cities short comments

Raleigh 2022-04-11 09:01:07

"Talking to yourself is not like talking, but listening"; "That's why you are here, hoping to talk to others, but it's just talking to yourself." Outside, the eyes are like photos (such as movies), and rock and roll enters Movie, if Alice is a lover who has no sexual desire, close her eyes before cutting the mirror, jumping on the jumping link that has never lived a beautiful life, life is always a photo of joy, sorrow and joy, just cut the mirror and close your eyes, cut the mirror and close your eyes, a few in your wallet A photo, now it's just a photo, know it's real, open the window. All in one. Suddenly, I had an idea: the little girl crossed the street and lay down beside him, but after jumping up and laying down, it was already a vast world (many years later, in real time).
Chesley 2022-04-09 09:01:09

1. The starting point of Wenders-style road films is also his favorite work. The motifs of self-lost and dazed, alienated relationship between people and cities, and complex feelings about American culture will never go back. . 2. Remembrance of images: Polaroids, TV sets, and telescopes capture and freeze reality - the separation of photos and reality: "Photos will never catch up with reality", even if the old house of Alice's grandmother in the photo is found, it will not be able to stop the world. easier. 3. In the United States, Philip, who was lost in images and could not write a story, smashed the TV set for advertising and scolded the commercial frenzy, but after all, he and Wenders indulged in rock music for a time (cameo by the jukebox). 4. The film is like a modern variation of the British Alice's fairy tale and the old German wandering motif, and in the rebirth of Philip and Alice's faces and the rebirth of their storytelling and writing abilities, the reverberation of the growth and development novel is still in my ears. 5. Alice's nightmare of being strapped to a chair to watch a horror movie is all too real. 6. From a distance, the bottom left panning long mirror of the plane starts (finally the sea), and the aerial photography train gradually zooms out to the upper right panning long mirror to end. (8.5/10)