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Martin Scorsese is one of a select group of young American directors-Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, and George Lucas, among them-regarded as the Great White Hopes of the Hollywood film industry. In 1973 his film mean streets won rich critical acclaim, and fully developed his personal vision of street life in Little Italy, the obsessions of growing up Catholic in a society structured by wild contradictions and rituals. This vision has concerned Scorsese since his awardwinning student short, it's not just you, Murray (1964) and his subsequent independent feature, who's that knocking at my door. Alice doesn't live here any more marks an important departure for the director. Not only is it his first big-budget picture directed under the aegis of a major studio, Warner Brothers, but-on the surface, at least-it's less personal, departing from macho street society to deal with the motivations, anxieties, and emotions of a woman seeking strength and independence after a constricting marriage has ended.
I've known Scorsese since the early Sixties when we were students together at New York University (I crewed for him on Murray). The following interview took place in Los Angeles at his home, while Hedy Lamarr was peering from the television screen as Delilah and Scorsese was providing running commentary on the De Mille epic in progress; at his bungalow-office on the Warner's lot; at a screening of Raoul Walsh's the man i love, which Scorsese was studying for Forties style and mood; at a color-correction run-through of ALICE doesn't LIVE HERE ANY MORE. It seemed to me that, while Alice may not be the "labor of love" the director frequently talks about, he has incorporated many of its perceptions into his own vision; and through the highly-improvisational work he encourages with his acting ensemble, through his own wonderful comic sense and attention to details of character and business, he had made this his own highly personal film as well.
A small, dark and intense man, Scorsese owns a mind that works so rapidly, his words, tumbling one after the other, can't come out fast enough. (He punctuates sentences with,. "You follow?" or "Understand?") And his thoughts are never far away from movies. At home old films play on his television constantly. He studies European and...