Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten) (U)

With the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will be Blood, 2008 looks like marking the return of that creature of yore, the cult director. Alice in the Cities, part of a Wim Wenders series running at the Filmhouse until March, hails directly from the era when a name at the end of the bill was enough to sell a movie.

First released in 1974, the film shows Wenders honing the style and ideas that would culminate in Paris, Texas a decade later. Like the Harry Dean Stanton vehicle, Alice in the Cities is a road movie with a difference. Shot in black and white, it's the story of a German writer, Philip, on the fag-end of a journey through the US. He's meant to be capturing the uniqueness of the country, but since leaving New York he's rather lost the plot. Everything has become a blur, with each strip mall and cheap motel looking like the last. Adrift, isolated and broke, he decides to head home. A chance meeting at the airline office with Alice and her troubled mother lands him with a responsibility he's not looking for, but one he cannot seem to relinquish.

Although it's part of relatively recent movie history, Alice in the Cities has the definite feel of a relic. The latest technology on show is the Polaroid camera toted by Philip, airports have coin-operated televisions, flares are in vogue, and the Twin Towers are still standing. It can be safely assumed that the story - a single man left in charge of a child he doesn't know - would never be green-lighted now.

For all its visual dustiness, there's a freshness about the picture that makes it highly watchable today. Rudiger Vogler (Philip) makes an unconventional, likeable lead, while Yella Rottlander lends remarkable support as the fragile, streetwise Alice. Wenders draws the viewer into his fractured, dreamy world, saying not very much but making a deep impression. A true original.