In 1974, Nora Sayre and Lawrence Van Gelder of "The New York Times" wrote that "Alice in the Cities" is "a film with a great deal to say about Europe and America, about the exhaustion of dreams and the homogenization of nations, about roots and the awareness of time, about sterility and creativity, about vicarious and real adventure and, eventually, about the possibilities of the future." The film also won the Best Film award at the German Film Critics Association Awards.