A newly widowed housewife, advancing toward middle age, hits the road, with her vocal twelve-year-old son in tow, in search of a future of some kind, hoping to make a go of it as the Alice Faye-style singer she dreamed of becoming in her childhood. (The passion for goldie-oldie songs and for the dreams dispensed in Golden Age Hollywood movies is a trait director Martin Scorsese shares with a few others in the New Hollywood.) The movie is quite good at excavating the sudden energies, child-ishnesses, and surprises that lie buried in people, although these revelations too regularly appear in the form of histrionic rages. Generally, Scorsese cannot resist scrounging for laughs (precocious kids, wisecracking waitresses), and he at least gets hold of the laughs he goes after. It is less clear what he hopes to accomplish with the fidgety, nerve-racking camera movements, which match Bertolucci in exuberance and excess. Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, Harvey Keitel. (1974) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.