Alice's Restaurant (1969). Photofest.
(Arthur Penn, US 1969, 111 min., 35mm)
Holidays. Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde follow-up, based on singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie’s eighteen-and-a-half-minute Thanksgiving classic, which itself was based on an episode in Guthrie’s own life, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. Guthrie plays himself, attending college in Montana primarily to avoid the draft. Eventually, he hitchhikes his way to Massachusetts to visit Ray and Alice in the deconsecrated church they now call home. Ray invites many people over for Thanksgiving dinner and Arlo and friends are arrested the next day for littering when their garbage doesn’t end up in the town dump. In court, Arlo faces mounting evidence, including “twenty-seven 8x10 colored glossy photographs,” when he discovers that justice is truly blind.