idea ·Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

The $85,000 backdrop

The Alice prologue set cost $85,000 of a $1.8M budget and shot for one day — five per cent of the film spent on announcing what the film is about.

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The soundstage set for Alice — the prologue — painted sky, farmyard, wooden house — cost about $85,000, against a total budget of roughly $1.8 million, and was used for one day of shooting. Warner Bros wanted the sequence gone; Scorsese kept it (Criterion — At Home in the World).

Five per cent of a budget is a striking enough number. The comparison the literature actually makes is sharper:

This opening scene cost $85,000, two and a half times the entire budget for Who's That Knocking.

Kelly, Martin Scorsese: A Journey (smj).

That is the fact worth teaching. On his first studio picture, Scorsese spent two and a half debut features on ninety seconds of homage that carries no plot. As a Commerce datum it cuts both ways: evidence of New Hollywood indulgence, and evidence of a studio funding an argument (Iconography rebuilt in order to be interrogated).

Teaching pair: The shower scene is built from 78 setups — Psycho's disproportionate spend of time; Alice's disproportionate spend of money. In both, the excess marks the scene the film considers its thesis.

Go on, then

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