About Alice in den Städten

Wim Wenders, 1973

I watched this morning Alice in the cities with a very precious friend.
I could have sweared I have seen this film a long time ago, but I realized I had this feeling because a friend told me so much about it many years ago that I convinced myself I saw it, so I saw it this morning for the first time in my life.
There are some movies by Wenders I'll never forget, like Im Lauf der Zeit (Kings of the road), Falsche Bewegung (The wrong move), Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of desire), and now there is a new one on my list.
In Alice in den Städten, Wenders talks already about wandering, physical or mental, through the character of Philip Winter, wonderfully played by Rüdiger Vogler.
The first time we meet him he is travelling through the USA and taking photos with his Polaroid, probably searching to prove to himself his own existence. There is a huge feeling of emptiness and meaningless, as when he says "Photos never show what we have seen".
Winter is also a self-centered man, unable to listen what other people say. When he asks his friend if she is allright, she answers no but he doesn't even hear her and talks only about himself.
When he meets Alice and her mother at the airport, he doesn't seem very interested about what the mother says.
And when he is in charge with Alice, we almost feel his irritation. The moment he begins to change is probably when Alice is crying in the toilets in the airport because her mother wasn't on the flight.
From this moment he tries to help her to find her grand-mother in Germany, in the Ruhrgebiet, his own homeland, and he begins to open to tenderness.
After having taken photos, he is photographed by Alice, and later they go to a photo booth and take photos of both of them together, the last one being a photo where they both smile.
In addition to the characters and the actors, I enjoyed a lot the music, the concert of Chuck Berry or the young boy huming On the road again near a jukebox.
I loved the feeling we are watching a world which is disappearing, like the old houses condemned to be destroyed.
And there is a very short moment in the movie which moved very much, a young boy biking, because I had the strong feeling to "intrude" in my most precious friend's childhood.