A potentially criminal act or a an act of mercy: Alice in the Cities

Wim Wenders's 1974 film, Alice in the Cities, is a fine travel movie in a mode that feels familiar in some ways - in fact, it was so much like another 1974 film, Paper Moon, that Wenders almost abandoned the project - but has a style of its own. The plot, such as is, involves a 31-year-old freelance journalist from Germany traveling in the U.S. to write a travel essay commissioned by a mag.; his research is getting him nowhere, although he's taking many Polaroid photos that he hopes to use in his writing (scribbling in a notebook, as one character notes). His agent/editor pretty much dumps him because he's oblivious to his deadline, and he prepares to fly home from NYC, but the flight is canceled. He provides some help (which leads to a one-night stand) to a German woman he meets at the terminal: She speaks little English, and is traveling w/ her 10-year-old daughter (Alice). Long and short, when he prepares to fly home the next day, the woman has left him a note asking him to be responsible for Alice - the mom has some relationship business to resolve w/ her ex. - on the flight and until she can get to Europe. So the man takes Alice to Amsterdam, rents a hotel room near the airport - of course the mother never arrives, which leads to an odyssey in Holland and then in Germany as they try in vain to find Alice's grandmother (all they have to go on is a photo of the grandmother's house). The plot feels not only improbable - who would leave a child to a stranger like that? Why would he take this young girl on an odyssey across Germany, how could he not perceive that he is likely to be arrested for kidnapping or even on a morals charge? And of course his  behavior seems even creepier today: What 45 years ago may have seemed like an amusing jaunt during which Alice and the man bond, today seems even creepier: Who won't cringe at the scene of him in the bathtub while Alice sits on the toilet seat, conversing w/ him? And other such moments. All that said, we do feel an attachment to Alice and even a sympathy for the poor man and his tender, protective relationship w/ this child. All his mistakes seem to be out of clumsiness and obliviousness, and what appears from the outside to be a potentially criminal act we see, from the inside, as an act of goodness and mercy, even if misguided. The end is puzzling in many ways, which I won't discuss here or give away, but will lead to much head-scratching I'd think. This film is like a prelude to WW's next, Wrong Move, with the same lead actor, once again an aspiring writer on a journey of discovery - although Alice, in which the dialog was created on the scene (Wrong Move held tightly to the Handke script), feels much more free and open and less pretentious. (Careful viewers will see WW appear in the film and to have his name come up in an amusing manner.)