SOURCE: "Heroines and Their Hairdresser," in Commentary, Vol. 59, No. 5, May, 1975, pp. 67-70.

In the following excerpt, Pechter lauds Scorsese's manipulation of film genre conventions in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

I spoke of the Cassavetes influence on Martin Scorsese when I reviewed the latter's Mean Streets [in Commentary, January 1974]. Scorsese's new film, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, still shows signs of the influence, chiefly in its excessively lunging, thrusting visual style, and in its use in a supporting role of the actress (Lelia Goldoni) who played the female lead in Cassavetes's first film, Shadows, and who's been seen in sufficiently few films since for her appearance here to constitute an act of homage.

Alice gets off to a none-too-promising start with its heroine, Alice Hyatt, as a little girl in Monterey, California, vowing to make it to the top and be better singer than Alice Faye, in a...