# Alice in the Cities
**Alice in the Cities** (German: *Alice in den Städten*) is a 1974 West German black-and-white road movie directed by [Wim Wenders](https://www.edgepedia.org/wim-wenders), in which a blocked German journalist and a nine-year-old girl travel through the [Rhineland](https://www.edgepedia.org/rhineland) and the Ruhr looking for the girl's grandmother. It was Wenders's fourth feature film, but by his own account the film in which he found his own cinematic language, and it is the first part of his Road Movie Trilogy, followed by *[Falsche Bewegung](https://www.edgepedia.org/falsche-bewegung)* (1975) and *Im Lauf der Zeit* (1976).[1](https://www.kinderundjugendmedien.de/kritik/filmkritiken/1694-alice-in-den-staedten-wim-wenders-1974?ris=1&tmpl=component)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / year | Wim Wenders, West Germany 1973/74; his fourth feature, which he often called "his first"[2](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/) |
| Format | 16 mm black and white blown up to 35 mm, ratio 1:1.37; 112 min, 3,060 m[3](https://www.filmportal.de/film/alice-in-den-staedten_92594f14e7e243f8a0de4b59844f7ff4) |
| First release | German television premiere 3 March 1974 on ARD[3](https://www.filmportal.de/film/alice-in-den-staedten_92594f14e7e243f8a0de4b59844f7ff4) |
| Principal cast | Rüdiger Vogler (Philip Winter), Yella Rottländer (Alice), Lisa Kreuzer (Lisa)[4](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401217/) |
| Key crew | Cinematography Robby Müller; editing Peter Przygodda; music by Can[4](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401217/) |
| Award | German Film Critics Award (Feature Film), 1975[2](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/) |
| Restoration | 4K scan and 2K restoration in 2014, released as a 2K DCP at 1:1.66; issued by the Criterion Collection in its Road Trilogy box[2](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/) |
## Spoilers
### Story
Philip Winter, a German journalist, has been sent by a magazine to write a report on regions of the United States. Everywhere he goes the places strike him as alike and interchangeable, and he cannot put his impressions into words; instead he photographs what he sees with a Polaroid camera, believing the images more reliable than language. After weeks on the road he returns to New York burned out, asks his publisher for an advance, and is refused.[3](https://www.filmportal.de/film/alice-in-den-staedten_92594f14e7e243f8a0de4b59844f7ff4) • [5](https://www.filmstarts.de/kritiken/60/kritik.html)
At John F. Kennedy Airport a controllers' strike has grounded the flights to Germany, and Winter meets a young German woman, Lisa, and her nine-year-old daughter Alice, who are in the same situation. The three spend a night in a hotel room and plan to fly to Amsterdam together the next day. In the morning Lisa has disappeared, leaving a note asking Winter to take Alice to Amsterdam, where she says she will follow. She never appears. Winter and Alice then begin a journey through the Rhineland and the Ruhr district in search of Alice's grandmother, whose name Alice does not know; the only clue is a photograph of the house she lives in.[3](https://www.filmportal.de/film/alice-in-den-staedten_92594f14e7e243f8a0de4b59844f7ff4) • [1](https://www.kinderundjugendmedien.de/kritik/filmkritiken/1694-alice-in-den-staedten-wim-wenders-1974?ris=1&tmpl=component)
During the search a quiet attachment develops between the two, expressed less in words than in gestures and glances, and their initial mutual dislike gradually turns into heartfelt affection.[3](https://www.filmportal.de/film/alice-in-den-staedten_92594f14e7e243f8a0de4b59844f7ff4) • [2](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/) Although the title points to [Lewis Carroll](https://www.edgepedia.org/lewis-carroll)'s Alice, the film is not Alice's story: the journalist stands at its center, and it is through the girl that he finds his way back to himself.[1](https://www.kinderundjugendmedien.de/kritik/filmkritiken/1694-alice-in-den-staedten-wim-wenders-1974?ris=1&tmpl=component)
## Production
Wenders had sworn off costume pictures after returning from the shooting of *Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe* in Spain, and wanted a small film in 16 mm and black and white, shot chronologically, without conventional dramaturgy, in which a little girl travels through Germany with a man.[6](https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/assets/Legacy/katalog_blaetter/1974_NeueDeutscheFilmeAliceInDenStaedten_1.pdf) Filming took place from August to September 1973 in [South Carolina](https://www.edgepedia.org/south-carolina), Virginia, New York, Amsterdam, Wuppertal, Essen, Duisburg, and [Gelsenkirchen](https://www.edgepedia.org/gelsenkirchen).[3](https://www.filmportal.de/film/alice-in-den-staedten_92594f14e7e243f8a0de4b59844f7ff4) The production was Produktion 1 im Filmverlag der Autoren of Munich, made for Westdeutscher Rundfunk of Cologne, with Wenders, Peter Genée, and Veith von Fürstenberg as producers and a screenplay by Wenders with Fürstenberg's collaboration.[2](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/)
Wenders had met Yella Rottländer by chance on his previous film *Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe*, in which she played Pearl; once he knew her, he decided that only she could play the girl traveling with the journalist.[7](https://www.minori.gov.it/it/minori/alice-nelle-citta-sinossi) Rüdiger Vogler, who was seen in the 1970s as a German Jean-Paul Belmondo and served Wenders as Belmondo had served [Jean-Luc Godard](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-luc-godard), also took the lead roles in the two later films of the trilogy.[1](https://www.kinderundjugendmedien.de/kritik/filmkritiken/1694-alice-in-den-staedten-wim-wenders-1974?ris=1&tmpl=component) The melancholic score draws on the German krautrock band Can, alongside [Chuck Berry](https://www.edgepedia.org/chuck-berry), Gustav Mahler, Canned Heat, Deep Purple, Count Five, and The Stories.[1](https://www.kinderundjugendmedien.de/kritik/filmkritiken/1694-alice-in-den-staedten-wim-wenders-1974?ris=1&tmpl=component) • [2](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/)
Reported running times differ slightly between reference sources: 112 minutes in the filmportal.de and Wenders Stiftung records, 113 minutes at Cineuropa, and 110 minutes in the Italian Minori.it and Arsenal listings.[3](https://www.filmportal.de/film/alice-in-den-staedten_92594f14e7e243f8a0de4b59844f7ff4) • [4](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401217/) • [7](https://www.minori.gov.it/it/minori/alice-nelle-citta-sinossi)
## Place in Wenders's work
The film marks the point at which Wenders, then part of the emerging New German Cinema, arrived at his own style; the FILMSTARTS review calls it his personal artistic breakthrough and the moment he became one of the great hopes of European film.[5](https://www.filmstarts.de/kritiken/60/kritik.html) Wenders himself has said that although it is technically his fourth film, he often refers to it as "his first," because it was during this film that he discovered the genre of the road movie.[2](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/) [Criterion](https://www.edgepedia.org/criterion) describes it as the first of the road films that would come to define his career.[8](https://www.criterionchannel.com/alice-in-the-cities) Its recurring theme, the tension between the here and now and an undefined distance, runs through his whole work; usually America is the object of longing, but here it is the return to Germany that leads to the discovery of an identity thought lost.[5](https://www.filmstarts.de/kritiken/60/kritik.html)
[The Italian](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-italian) film-history account credits Wenders with importing a genre born in the United States in the late 1960s and infusing it with a European, specifically Central European, sensibility, noting the influence of the nineteenth-century German *Entwicklungsroman*, the novel of development.[7](https://www.minori.gov.it/it/minori/alice-nelle-citta-sinossi) The German Federal Agency for Civic Education's Filmkanon notes that the freedom Wenders found at the end of the film remained unique both in his own directing career and in German cinema of the 1970s.[9](https://www.bpb.de/lernen/filmbildung/filmkanon/43599/alice-in-den-staedten/) One scene has taken on a particular resonance in retrospect: on the [Empire State Building](https://www.edgepedia.org/empire-state-building), Alice looks through a telescope toward the World Trade Center and follows a white dove in the air.[10](https://www.moviebreak.de/film/alice-in-den-stadten)
## Restoration
The original 16 mm negative was effectively dead after more than 100 prints had been struck from it over the years; it had cracks, severe scratches, perforation and fungus damage, and mold, and no new print could be made from it. The Wim Wenders Foundation, founded in 2012 in [Düsseldorf](https://www.edgepedia.org/dusseldorf), restored the film image by image, more than 160,000 frames, partly by hand retouching; it was the first film the foundation tackled.[11](https://www.die-stiftung.de/news/stifter-anstifter/wim-wenders-traum-dass-die-filme-sich-selbst-gehoeren-153135/) When the foundation took it on for digital restoration in 2014, the negative was the most damaged material its staff had worked with up to that point.[12](https://thepeepingarchivist.com/a-work-in-process-the-restoration-work-of-the-wim-wenders-foundation-a-workshop-report-with-wim-wenders-october-2017-berlin-germany/) The result was a 4K scan and 2K restoration released as a 2K DCP at 1:1.66, which allowed a widescreen format to be realized.[2](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/) • [13](https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/wie-archive-und-dienstleister-die-filmgeschichte-bewahren-wollen-4111465.html?icid=in-text-link_6051142) The restored version opened the Düsseldorf Filmmuseum's 2015 Wenders retrospective in the director's presence and was issued by the Criterion Collection in its Road Trilogy box set.[14](https://www.filmstiftung.de/news/wim-wenders-werkschau-eroeffnet-am-19-april/) • [2](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/)
## References
1. [Alice in den Städten (Wim Wenders, 1974), KinderundJugendmedien.de](https://www.kinderundjugendmedien.de/kritik/filmkritiken/1694-alice-in-den-staedten-wim-wenders-1974?ris=1&tmpl=component)
2. [Alice in the Cities, Wim Wenders Stiftung](https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/alice-in-den-staedten-2/)
3. [Alice in den Städten, filmportal.de](https://www.filmportal.de/film/alice-in-den-staedten_92594f14e7e243f8a0de4b59844f7ff4)
4. [Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten), Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401217/)
5. [Alice in den Städten, FILMSTARTS-Kritik](https://www.filmstarts.de/kritiken/60/kritik.html)
6. [ALICE IN DEN STÄDTEN, Arsenal catalogue sheet, Neue Deutsche Filme 1974](https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/assets/Legacy/katalog_blaetter/1974_NeueDeutscheFilmeAliceInDenStaedten_1.pdf)
7. [Alice nelle città, Minori.it](https://www.minori.gov.it/it/minori/alice-nelle-citta-sinossi)
8. [Alice in the Cities, The Criterion Channel](https://www.criterionchannel.com/alice-in-the-cities)
9. [Alice in den Städten, Der Filmkanon, bpb.de](https://www.bpb.de/lernen/filmbildung/filmkanon/43599/alice-in-den-staedten/)
10. [Alice in den Städten, Moviebreak.de](https://www.moviebreak.de/film/alice-in-den-stadten)
11. [Wim Wenders: Traum, dass die Filme sich selbst gehören, DIE STIFTUNG](https://www.die-stiftung.de/news/stifter-anstifter/wim-wenders-traum-dass-die-filme-sich-selbst-gehoeren-153135/)
12. [A Work in Process: The Restoration Work of the Wim Wenders Foundation, The Peeping Archivist](https://thepeepingarchivist.com/a-work-in-process-the-restoration-work-of-the-wim-wenders-foundation-a-workshop-report-with-wim-wenders-october-2017-berlin-germany/)
13. [Von Wenders bis zur Wochenschau, Der Tagesspiegel](https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/wie-archive-und-dienstleister-die-filmgeschichte-bewahren-wollen-4111465.html?icid=in-text-link_6051142)
14. [Wim Wenders Werkschau eröffnet am 19. April, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW](https://www.filmstiftung.de/news/wim-wenders-werkschau-eroeffnet-am-19-april/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1970s › Released 1970 to 1974*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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