Alice's Restaurant: the best American counterculture movie?
During the period 1967-1971 director Arthur Penn made three outstanding movies that commented on, and reflected, the USA during that convulsive time. The first, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), captured the current youthful mood of anti-authoritarianism and rebellion, as well as the emerging fascination with on-screen violence. The third of this trilogy, 1971's sprawling epic Little Big Man used the Western genre to ridicule hallowed icons of American mythology such as Custer's Last Stand and the American military. It opposed what Penn portrayed as a vicious, greedy, unscrupulous American 'civilisation' destroying what is presented a noble, dignified, and brave Cheyenne Indian civilisation - an updated counterculture version of the 'noble savage' stereotype.
Sandwiched between these two movies is Alice's Restaurant, Penn's direct approach to the that counterculture. Fittingly and ironically it was released the day after the Woodstock festival ended. This brave and elegiac movie is always overlooked in discussions about counterculture movies - no doubt because Alice's Restaurant is the antithesis of what such movies are supposed to be about. Penn deliberately overturns our stereotyped expectations and assumptions about hippie culture and protest movements in the late sixties. Although it is critical of many aspects of the hippie/counterculture of the time, Alice's Restaurant is one of the few movies about that subject that conveys a sense of the shared and caring community that was one of the unrealised dreams of the movement. But it also has an unfashionable element of disillusionment with the whole counterculture ethos, which probably explains why it's a neglected masterpiece.
Sandwiched between these two movies is Alice's Restaurant, Penn's direct approach to the that counterculture. Fittingly and ironically it was released the day after the Woodstock festival ended. This brave and elegiac movie is always overlooked in discussions about counterculture movies - no doubt because Alice's Restaurant is the antithesis of what such movies are supposed to be about. Penn deliberately overturns our stereotyped expectations and assumptions about hippie culture and protest movements in the late sixties. Although it is critical of many aspects of the hippie/counterculture of the time, Alice's Restaurant is one of the few movies about that subject that conveys a sense of the shared and caring community that was one of the unrealised dreams of the movement. But it also has an unfashionable element of disillusionment with the whole counterculture ethos, which probably explains why it's a neglected masterpiece.
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Left: The real Alice [Alice Brock] with Arlo Guthrie on set. She appears in the crowd in film's final sequence.
Right: Director Arthur Penn on set with Arlo Guthrie in the jail sequence. |
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The Movie's Background
In the late sixties Arlo Guthrie, son of the legendary folk-singer Woody Guthrie , had his one and only hit song, an eighteen minutes long talking blues - Alice's Restaurant Massacree, which was based on Arlo's recent run-in with the U.S. military draft bureaucracy. But instead of being indignant and self-righteous as the mood of the times dictated, Guthrie poked gentle fun at the whole process. The song details how he ends up in a commune in rural Massachusetts, and helping his friend Alice when she opens a restaurant. His eventual arrest for littering after cleaning up a communal meal means that his criminal record now marks him ineligible to serve in the U.S. army. Penn's movie essentially follows this meandering low-key path, although it focuses rather more on the Stockbridge commune, Ray and Alice, and Arlo's relationship with them .
In the late sixties Arlo Guthrie, son of the legendary folk-singer Woody Guthrie , had his one and only hit song, an eighteen minutes long talking blues - Alice's Restaurant Massacree, which was based on Arlo's recent run-in with the U.S. military draft bureaucracy. But instead of being indignant and self-righteous as the mood of the times dictated, Guthrie poked gentle fun at the whole process. The song details how he ends up in a commune in rural Massachusetts, and helping his friend Alice when she opens a restaurant. His eventual arrest for littering after cleaning up a communal meal means that his criminal record now marks him ineligible to serve in the U.S. army. Penn's movie essentially follows this meandering low-key path, although it focuses rather more on the Stockbridge commune, Ray and Alice, and Arlo's relationship with them .
How Alice's Restaurant upsets the typical counterculture movie stereotypes
 'Easy Rider': Peter Fonda as Captain America
The counterculture hero
Raffishly handsome, rugged, moody, resentful, high tolerance for drugs, alcohol, hates authority figures and is irresistible to women. But Arlo Guthrie, the eponymous hero of Alice's Restaurant is different. He's slight of build, not conventionally good looking, seeking a place to call home. He's also polite, mild, and considerate to everyone, including police and military personnel. |
Polite, self-effacing, considerate - not your typical counterculture hero.
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'Gold' - nudity, sex plus mud.
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Sex
During the late 1960s Hollywood movies became much more explicit in their depiction of sex. Supporters of this trend claimed the approach was realistic and adult; oppponents complained about 'obscenity' and 'permissiveness'. Most movies about the counterculture gleefully included explicit sex scenes that were once called 'daring' and which now are tedious and laughable. But Alice's Restaurant's avoids this trap; Penn does not confuse explicitness with realism or insight. |
'Alice's Restaurant': deliberately low-key.
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'Zabriskie Point' has an eclectic selection of music, but it relies heavily on Pink Floyd psychedelia.
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Music
One of the best features of non-documentary movies about the counterculture was their use of music (ofen 'psychedelic' ) as a counterpoint to on-screen events. Easy Rider's soundtrack is a famous example; so is Zabriskie Point, which assembles an eclectic selection of artists (Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Patti Page, Rolling Stones, the Youngbloods etc). But Alice's Restaurant is based on Arlo Guthrie's talking blues 'Masacree' and its key music involves two versions of the old hymn 'Amazing Grace' |
Woody Guthrie folk style music is the dominant musical influence in 'Alice's Restaurant'.
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Portrayal of Hippies
Movies such as The Love-ins (1967) as a bunch of zany, sex-obsessed flower children, usually stoned out of their minds and speaking in hippie-cliches. But most of hippies in Alice's Restaurant are intelligent, thoughtful people, more conceerned with opposing the Vietnam war e.g. Arlo's induction and establishing a viable communal lifestyle. than with drugs or sex. |
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Death Valley desert in 'Zabriskie Point'.
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Settings
Counterculture movies were usually set on college campuses, quaintly idyllic rural settings, shabbily-chic houses. San Franicisco and New Orleans were the cities of choice. Alice's Restaurant has New York sequences but it is mainly set in and around the small,semi-rural New England town of Stockbridge. |
Deconsecrated church, Stockbridge, Mass.
'Three stop signs, two police officers, one police car'
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Exciting and visceral back in the sixties, part of 'Easy Rider''s attempt to be cool and ingratiate itself with the youthful audience.
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Road Movie
The road movie is one of the classic American cinematic genres, encompassing comedies, westerns, film noir, 'adult drama'.Easy Rider uses the now hackneyed cliche of rebellious guys on powerful motorbikes. Alice's Restaurant largely leaves the motorbikes to a home movie show and has its hero resort to hitchhiking for transport. Both movies exemplify the classic Americana theme of 'on the road in search of....?' |
Arlo Guthrie hitchiking in 'Alice's Restaurant' -typical of Penn's demystification of the hippie lifestyle and of Penn's refusal to emulate current movie cliches about the counterculture.
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The Surprising Hero of Alice's Restaurant
Pat Quinn as Alice, who turns out to be the key figure in the movie -not Arlo Guthrie.
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Arthur penn directing Pat Quinn.
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Pat Quinn as Alice and James Broderick as Ray, friend whose wedding at the close of the movie is both climactic and unsettling.
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Although Alice's Restaurant is based on Arlo Guthrie's minor hit song of the late 1960s, Alice's Restaurant Massacree, a talking blues 'song' (or extended narrative with a chorus), and stars Guthrie as himself, and even employs people and locations mentioned in the song, something puzzling and significant happens towards the end of the movie. The focus shifts from Arlo and his struggles with the draft board and the law. Instead the movie turns its attention to the figure of Alice, her relationship with friend Ray, and their wedding, which concludes the film. Alice is the owner of the titular restaurant, in her mid-thirties, slightly stocky, not conventionally pretty. But as we gradually come to realise she is the crucial figure who holds the diverse and unstable hippie community together and acts as its stabilising moral anchor. As David Carter notes in his perceptive review, Alice is a 'mother figure' to Ray and the community living in the former Stockbridge church. Carter compares her to Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath -'the matriach of this loose clan, none of whom could function without her.' [David Carter http://www.notcoming.com/reviews/alicesrestaurant] Although Ray and Alice marry at the end of the movie, we know that Ray is unreliable, dishonest, a bit of a con-man. He leaves the hard work of running the commune to Alice, who is well aware of Ray's flaws and how he and the hippies take her for granted. Consequently, the movie ends on a melancholy and elegiac note, with the camera circling the trees in the churchyard. There are no shootouts with police, no jubilant singing and dancing, no drug-induced mystical trances.
The haunting and enigmatic final shot.
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