Alice in the Cities

Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten, 1974) is a black-and-white road film you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Wim Wenders. Rüdiger Vogler plays Philip Winter, a German journalist drifting along the American East Coast with a Polaroid camera and a bad case of writer's block. Yella Rottländer is Alice, nine years old and suddenly his problem.

Philip meets Alice and her mother at the airport while trying to get back to Germany. The flight is delayed. The mother slips away and leaves a note about a grandmother somewhere in Europe — address approximate. Philip is not family, not even a friend. He's just the man who happened to be there, and now he and Alice are crossing a continent looking for someone neither of them can describe.

Wenders shot this at twenty-nine, and the film is where his method fully clicked into place: roads as thought, cities as mood, long silences that carry more than most dialogue. Chuck Berry out of a car radio, Can on the in-between stretches, Mahler for the moments that earn it. Stream Alice in the Cities online on iFILM.