Martin Scorsese: Ranking His Movies From Worst To Best

6. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Perhaps more than any film in his body of work, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore stands as a fine example that, behind the stylish camerawork for which he is perhaps most famous, Martin Scorsese delivers a nuanced degree of attention to his characters. It certainly helped that he had one of the finest artists of her generation in the lead role, Ellen Burstyn. Following on from the death of her husband, Alice decides to set off on a road trip with her young son in search of a better life. Along the way she takes up menial jobs whilst trying her best to make it as a singer, as a variety of men try and enter her life, for better or worse. It's an unusual film for Scorsese - part melodrama, part road movie - in which his typically exuberant directing style comes over more restrained and is all the better for it. Burstyn quite rightly won the Academy Award for Best Actress - the focus of the movie from start to finish, her performance is one in which the opposing qualities of fragility and strength somehow - paradoxically - sit alongside one another, recalling the rich female characters of directors like John Cassavettes.