Alice’s Restaurant **** (1969, Arlo Guthrie, Patricia Quinn, James Broderick) – Classic Movie Review 6334

‘You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.’ Co-writer/ director Arthur Penn’s engaging, quirky, sometimes brilliant 1969 anti-establishment film perfectly captures the late-Sixties stop-the-Vietnam War spirit of the Arlo Guthrie song (‘The Alice’s Restaurant Massacre’) that inspired it.

Oscar-nominated Best Director Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) directs and co-writes with verve and skill, and folk singer Arlo Guthrie ingratiates, playing himself living among Vermont’s flower children while on the verge of being drafted into the US Army.

Pat [Patricia] Quinn is fun in her film debut as Alice; Joseph Boley plays Arlo’s father, the legendary folk artist Woody Guthrie. The judge (James Hannon) and arresting cop (William Obanhein) who actually jailed Arlo Guthrie as a litterbug after dumping Alice’s trash on a pile of garbage at the bottom of a ravine blithely re-enact their roles. It is a good movie, and now also a valuable and revealing document of those great but troubled transitional times.

Also in the cast are James Broderick, Michael McClanathan, Geoff Outlaw, Tina Chen, Kathleen Dabney, Seth Allen, Monroe Arnold, M Emmet Walsh, Joseph Boley, Vinnette Carroll, Sylvia Davis, Simm Landres, Eulalie Noble, Louis Beachner, Pete Seeger and Lee Hays.

Running 110 minutes, this Florin production and United Artists release is written by Venable Herndon and Arthur Penn, shot by Michael Nebbia, produced by Hilliard Elkins, Joe Manduke and Harold Levanthal, scored by Arlo Guthrie and Garry Sherman, and designed by Warren Clymer.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6334

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