Harvey Keitel and Ellen Burstyn in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (1974) dir. Martin Scorsese

This is an incredibly intense scene from Martin Scorsese’s 1974 follow-up to “Mean Streets,” the proto-feminist “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.”  The recently widowed Alice, portrayed by Ellen Burstyn, discovers that the man she has hooked up with (played by Harvey Keitel) is married with a child.  Keitel’s character then appears and unleashes a very scary side to his personality that Alice has not seen before.  Even though there’s not a lot of bad language per se, the intensity of this scene is shocking for a then PG-rated film.  Seriously, this entire scene is extraordinarily weird and disturbing for a mainstream film, but then again, that was Hollywood in the 1970s.  Burstyn earned an Oscar for her performance in “Alice,” which while well-deserved, probably should have earned it for “The Exorcist” or “Requiem for a Dream.” Still, a great performance and an amazing look at how ballsy mainstream American cinema once was.

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