Metrograph

When her husband dies unexpectedly, Alice (Ellen Burstyn), a New Mexico housewife and mother of a 12-year-old boy, decides to start over from scratch, trying her hand at the singing career she’d always dreamed of. Burstyn took a chance of her own, recommending a still-young Marty Scorsese for the directing gig, and came away with an Oscar for her gamble, doing luminous, career-high work alongside Kris Kristofferson as the handsome stranger who offers Alice a second chance at love. Coming off the distinctly macho Mean Streets, Scorsese relied heavily on female collaborators for this, his lone “women’s picture,” including production designer Toby Carr Rafelson and editor Marcia Lucas, receiving her first solo editing credit here, who had an unusual amount of leeway to shape the film. (Of an improvised scene of Alice’s son telling a story in the car, Scorsese remembers: “I didn’t touch it.”)