Wim Wenders

(poll)

weird career

I've only seen Goalie and Alice in the Cities once each some 30 years ago, else I might vote for one of them--liked them both a lot at the time (especially the music). Kings of the Road I've seen three or four times; that's a good one too. I suppose Wings of Desire will win, but I'll vote for Paris, Texas--it's kind of a concoction with little connection to the actual world, but very atmospheric, and, again, I love the music. I don't think I've seen anything since Wings of Desire.

Alice in the Cities is my pick, though I know it won't win: a road movie that maybe because it has a child in it, seemed the most soulful. Kings of the Road is a close second, and more epic. Wings of Desire was great, mostly, Paris is gorgeous, as are most of his movies: Lisbon Story, Until the End of the World, Buena Vista—the look, and the music. American Friend, Goalie, both good. Million Dollar Hotel, Don't Come Knocking, were dumb (Sam Shepard writes crummy movie dialogue). haven't seen most of these

man that scene in the booth at the end of Paris, Texas drags on forever.

As much as WOD is an all-time favorite, gonna abstain from piling on the vote here due to criminal unfamiliarity with his other work. Been meaning to get to American Friend and Kings of the Road at least.

Kings of the Road, easy...

Sorta interested in Pina.

Lotta good stuff, went wherever his muse took him for both good and bad. Separating out the emotional baggage (saw a Wings of Desire/Faraway double feature on one of the first dates with my wife; went to Lisbon for our honeymoon because we fell in love with it in Lisbon Story) I'm going with Notebooks on Cities and Clothes. One of my favorite documentaries, and I don't expect it to garner much support.

Alice In The Cities over Kings Of The Road and The American Friend, Wings Of Desire seemed a bit emo-goth the last time I saw it tbh. Kings Of The Road would've got my vote actually, but for the scene of the main guy taking a shit. I don't want to see a turd squeezing out of a moustached German guy's arse, thank you very much Wim.

I think Kings of the Road and Paris, Texas are probably at least as good as Wings of Desire, but there's a lot I havent seen.

didn't like Wings of Desire really, but I love & own Paris, Texas. Always wanted to get into other movies of his, but the only other one that stood out in that discography was Kings of the Road. I'll be using this thread as a sort of guide on what to check out.

iirc "wings of desire" had some cool camera work & a few cool scenes but overall i thought it was pretty unspectacular

I think my crush on Nastassja Kinski began with my first viewing of Paris, Texas

WOD was kitsch.

voted wings, am no more likely to revisit it than i am to reread catcher in the rye or my old junior high. still, even though kings of the road and my american friend are much better movies, i'd feel like i'm betraying myself or at least kidding myself if i didn't vote wings.

i voted 'wings of desire,' and the hell with all you cool kids.

'catcher' is great too, dammit.

Kitsch isn't a bad description: I was stoned when I watched WOD, so maybe my opinion is compromised, but I felt it was a lot less philosophical than I expected. Which was probably the point and entirely appropriate, being that it is a movie that argues for the lower pleasures at the expense of the higher ones.

Paris, Texas

voted Alice although I turned it off 20 minutes the last time I watched it. I have little time for its slow pace these days but I know the film well enough that I don't really need to see it anymore. I've been trying to find the Can soundtrack for years - to no avail.
Wings a very close second, no matter how uncool it now seems. I can see the seeds of what went wrong later for Wenders but I still love it - if only for being the portrait of a city that would mostly disappear shortly thereafter.
Lisbon Story (his last stroke of good taste), False Movement and American Friend are all great as well.

ilx surely prefers Nicolas Cage remake to WoD

yeah I thought Meg Ryan was just fantastic in that!

Alice In The Cities. What a film, and certainly the best of the few that I've seen.

Kings vs. Alice. Tough choice.

love this guy. The road trilogy is amazing (Im Lauf der Zeit is his best movie, but Alice in den Stadten is very good as well, the third one - Falsche Bewegung - was ok)

I've never seen The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, and I don't know if I want to, what a title :)

It's another good one

yeah it has to be, judging from the period (1968) and also this IMDB description!

A goalkeeper Josef Bloch is ejected during a game for foul play. He leaves the field and goes to spend the night with a cinema cashier. He then proceeds to strangle her the morning after.

also this guy sort of saved Souljacker for me (with that segment) in retrospect it's not even that bad of an eels record (but by no means intent to derail this tread)

Wenders, Wenders, Wenders.

so if the Kings of the Road films are 1-3 for me. I have to pick out Der Amerikanische Freund for the 4th spot. And now i'll stop rambling

'72 not '68

woops yeah, i read IMDB's 6.8 user ranking as the year heh. o_O'

Goalie is good if you're into Peter Handke books (the film is based on one of his novels) and the slow pace and constant feeling of hesitation that characterizes them - same as False Movement.

yea goalie is v good, i have it on vhs. has a bit of an american psycho vibe, but more understated & better

I like films with football matches in them

El Secreto de Sus Ojos!

I don't think Goalie has ever been released on DVD? I can't find it in a quick search. and the VHS r*p that's floating around has no seeders.. (and probably no subitles either, and mein Deutsch ist scrappy)

paris, texas

wings of desire overrated, can have a big impact the first time you see it but subsequent viewings don't hold up

oh right glad we got that settled then

haven't seen most of these, but paris, texas gets my vote. great movie imo.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

2000 The Million Dollar Hotel 1

haha -- waht

surprised by the number of votes for Kings of the Road

anyone catch Pina?

no, but all the reviews I've read have been fantastic. I promised myself I wouldn't fall for any WW "return to form" crap anymore but I'm tempted to break that rule.

nick james was very keen on it, i think, partly as an extension of the idea that 3d is most successful for documentary, where being vivid is a bigger priority than adding some kind of weird depth. i might go tomorrow.

I liked Million Dollar Hotel a lot! But voted for Until the End of the World.

I rambled on a bit about Pina here:

RIP Pina Bausch

Short version: loved it, 3D super effective at times, would recommend.

anybody ever watch Don't Come Knocking? Wenders re-uniting w Sam Shepard, has probably my two favorite actress in it (Sarah Polley & Fairuza Balk), seems to be one of the few WW movies Ed Gonzales reps for. Any thoughts out there?

not awful, but not good. it does look fairly nice but wenders is obsessed for some reason w/ spinning the camera 360 degrees, he does it like ten times. lol @ ur fav actress being fairuza balk

lol thx tho

Watched Paris, Texas for the first time in ages. (The DVD collections at Toronto libraries are schizophrenic--Criterions alongside Son of Happy Gilmore.) I was 23 when it came out and I saw it in Montreal, and that was just the right age--had a big effect on me. The music, the cinematography of the driving-at-night scenes, the echo of American films of the '70s via Harry Dean Stanton and Dean Stockwell, it all clicked. I watched it a few times, and the things that started to bother me then still do. The two big scenes between HDS and Kinski, most of all: they go on forever and bring the film to a complete halt. Also the improbability of how long it takes Kinski to realize who she's talking to.

But the first 90 minutes held up well. The kid is just great. Two odd instances where it may have influenced other films: 1) Harry Dean's antics at the airport are pretty much identical to Hoffman's in Rain Man, and 2) Stockwell's exasperation with HDS's muteness--"I can be silent too"--reminded me of Steve Buscemi in Fargo. Okay, I'm reaching.

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-10-25/entertainment/ca-14420_1_ronee-blakley

Summer in the City is set in a dirty urban winter -- oh, the 24-year-old film student's japery!

It's about as distended and tedious as any film featuring about 20 Kinks songs on the soundtrack can be.

I'm discovering I really don't like Wenders' deep catalog, so thanks, MoMA.

yeah, it's def. in the "pretentious student film" category, but it's interesting in light of what was shortly to come -- and very rare (it's never been on home video that i know of).

the kinks songs, btw, are why the film has never been properly released (although morbs might argue it's also b/c it's terrible). a similar issue afflicts several of his short films from that period, most of which use american rock music on their soundtracks. indeed, the soundtracks are as often as not the subjects of the films.

i can't recall if summer in the city actually features the song "summer in the city"

it does. the whole thing.

also a complete TV perf of the Kinks doing "Days," which I'll take over Solveig D caterwauling her way through it (RIP). and there's a short lecture on Three Godfathers.

A few minutes later, Franco materializes at the museum, because that is what James Franco does, and walks up to Wenders. Franco gives him a bear hug, then begins talking — about shooting "Every Thing"; about giving Wenders a cameo role in his own new directorial effort "Zeroville" ("Larry the Hippie," Franco says; "Larry the Elderly Hippie," Wenders corrects); about a Björk exhibit at the museum; about several other matters on Franco's mind.

After Franco leaves, Wenders turns to a reporter and asks, "Do you think there's only one of him?"

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-wim-wenders-20150312-story.html

Pretty good question tbh

I skipped Until the End of the World at the time--I wasn't even crazy about Wings of Desire--but there's a clip in the Steve Jobs documentary that makes me want to see it now. I'm sure it's the mess that most people said it was, but the clip seemed prophetic and immediate. In any event, Amazon prices are insane.

Janus Films was a number of Wenders' films in the pipeline for a travelling retro...and eventual Criterions (if they haven't already had the treatment). They are:

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
Alice in the Cities
Wrong Move
Kings of the Road
The American Friend
The State of Things
Paris, Texas
Tokyo-ga
Wings of Desire
Notebook on Cities and Clothes
Until the End of the World (Director's Cut)
Buena Vista Social Club

Haven't watched this shit since the 90s. Only one way to find out if I can still appreciate it.

Until the End is about to be reissued for sure

but the clip seemed prophetic and immediate

was it Claire screaming "you killed me! I am dead! my heart is dead!" because the batteries on her iPad were at 0% and Gene wouldn't let her plug it in to recharge?

No dialogue, just people staring blankly at what looked like a 1991 version of personal-device screens. I encounter a lot of that day to day.

WW back in NYC for the IFC Center retro

http://www.ifccenter.com/series/wim-wenders-portraits-along-the-road/

An interesting new review of the directors cut

http://gu.com/p/4bpjd

At one point Hoffman says "you can laugh now but..." and I can say the same w/r/t an earlier film - at 15yo Wings of Desire broke my brain and opened me up to whole realms of artistic expression I was unaware of. It has longuers and silly sections but I can honestly say that film changed my life.

i was shocked at the pan around Shea Stadium in Alice -- a place i spent a fair amount of time in the summer of '73 -- and as a topper, WW fixing this shot on decades-long Mets organist Jane Jarvis.

http://auteurs_production.s3.amazonaws.com/post_images_danny/multiple%20images/Alice%20in%20the%20Cities/alice_1.jpg

A scene that has stayed with me for 35 years, now on YouTube of course.

http://heardjustwhatiseen.wordpress.com/2016/01/30/in-the-rain-and-snow/

Has anyone seen the new 3D one? His 3D documentaries have been pretty interesting, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

I saw Kings of the Road three times within a couple of weeks in 1984 when it had a short run in this dingy neighborhood theatre that mostly played softcore porn. Very susceptible to its mood and look at that particular point in my life (I was 22 or 23). For almost the first half tonight, I was second-guessing myself a little--still looked great, but it seemed rather mannered, and just kind of puttered along. Then all the good stuff showed up: Lisa Kreuzer (especially the Truffaut-like tear), the motorbike, "Just Like Eddie," the complicated train-leaving shot, the Last Picture Show-like ending (a little pat, nice anyway). Rüdiger Vogler's sleepy-eyed amble gets a little wearing at times, and I thought the scene between Hanns Zischler and his father was the film's clumsiest--much better in Five Easy Pieces. Great discovery: Crispian St. Peters' "So Long" (the guy who did "The Pied Piper"--I'm now wondering if it was his "You Were on My Mind" in The Goalie's Anxiety, not a remake). I thought the one projectionist looked a lot like R.W. Fassbinder, not accidental I'm sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJeglDl1SiI

Seems like my main takeaway from seeing the restored Wrong Move tonight was that Hanna Schygulla was probably the coolest person in the world in 1975...and that the long walk'n'talk on the mountain road about midway through is possibly the most beautiful example of its ilk.

https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/1186-wim-wenders-the-road-trilogy

Rental place here has The Wrong Move--how would you rank it against the other two?

i'd say the weakest of the 3. more arty and a bit like Himmel Uber Berlin (still pretty good though)

The most angsty. In full brownish 70's color

Saw the 4-1/2 hour cut of Until the End of the World tonight. I fleetingly contemplated leaving during the intermission--I wasn't hating it, just wasn't terribly interested and drifting a bit. Glad I stuck around for the science-fiction-heavy second half, especially the whole dream-capture segment. Some of the images were beautiful, and there really was a kind of prophetic brilliance to Hurt and Dommartin in the throes of device-addiction. Liked some of the soundtrack: the Lou Reed and Peter Gabriel songs, the one played by the in-film pick-up band. There's a really good sci-fi film buried in here; not sure why Wenders decided to couch it in a rag-tag, elephantine road movie (and the video conference call at the end felt like a sitcom).

Didn't like Wings of Desire in 1987, liked it even less tonight. The colour section isn't bad, and Falk is funny. Found the first couple of hours oppressively self-important. People are sad and lonely, and (or but) there are angels watching over us with tender, imploring gazes--didn't need two hours to get that across. I almost always like the look of post-1970 B&W films, but even the cinematography seemed contrived (the massing birds was nice). The club scenes felt like a blueprint for the roadhouse scenes in Twin Peaks. (Thought I spotted Jim Jarmusch but didn't see his name in the credits.)

the one where james franco is a novelist in quebec one is the worst movie i have ever seen in my life

lol ive been curious abt that flick

The American Friend looks amazing, Hopper is super cool, and the subway sequence was tense and exciting, but I found it kind of needlessly opaque. Ripley's Game did it better.

Some of the images were beautiful, and there really was a kind of prophetic brilliance to Hurt and Dommartin in the throes of device-addiction.

Until the End of the World has lots of prophetic brilliance (tablets, navigation systems, the Euro) weighed down by Ranxerox eurotrash cyberpunk nonsense, which I love even more.

also watched The American Friend CC over the weekend, beautiful Robby Muller images; most of it looks like it was shot between 5 and 8 a.m. One of the '70s genre curveballs that works best imho.

The depiction of future-1999 San Francisco in UTEOTW, where the car dealer robs them and most scenes are derelict streets with cops harassing everyone, gets the flavor of actual USA future pretty well, I thought. then cut to a fancy bar where all that shit is erased from view, and she's going on about a delicious cocktail. And the French criminal guy is just clearly delighted by all of it.

I bet I've said this before on ILX.

Watched Paris Texas for the first time in 20 years or so. Still classic for the photography but the seeds of late era WW corniness were already there

Saw The American Friend for the first time--I always kind of dodged it for some reason. The print was restored and exceedingly beautiful, especially the cityscapes. Was intermittently bored. Guessing this is where Wes Anderson learned about the Kinks (or at least "Nothing in This World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl"), so salut for that.

just saw Paris, Texas for the first time at a rep screening, someone was cutting up onions somewhere nearby

saw Paris, Texas for the third time tonight, first in a theater. Robby Müller's cinematography is gorgeous, masterful - Ry Cooder's score is perfect (a friend made a great point that strings would've ruined this movie) - but I still don't like this movie at all. I find the 'mute walking in the desert' conceit corny beyond belief, the last twenty minutes are an expository dump without much clarity, but mostly I totally disagree with where the filmmakers' sympathies lie. Travis is not a sympathetic character, and the way the movie ditches Dean Stockwell & Aurore Clement halfway thru is just awful. we're supposed to smile when him and the kid are playing with walkie talkies in the truck. it's not fucking funny. he acts like a child the whole movie because he is a child, he's a coward, and thoroughly pathetic - how he can't even face her at the end. good lord... and that they brought the kid along... imagine how those adopted parents must feel. now, I will say it sailed by this time, no doubt because I was in a huge theater. it's a beautiful looking movie, but its ethics are backwards and it celebrates a certain type of man child 'playful' irresponsibility that I find really disgusting. Goddamn good score, though.

only watched Paris, Texas a long time ago, have been meaning to revisit

Good post flappy. This film, like most other WW films from his imperial period, has been so ingrained in me ever since my teenage years that it's hard to see it objectively. To a large extent, 'Alice in the Cities' does much better some of the same things that 'Paris, TX' is trying to do.

Is it worth seeing The American Friend on the big screen? I have that opportunity this week. Frankly I’m afraid it might be too grim/too slow.

I think you might actually enjoy it. Think it looks really good, for one thing.

Where’s it playing?

Film Forum, part of the Patricia Highsmith series. It seems they added a few showings after it was supposed to be done with

Missed the whole thing except for the trailers. Looked interesting. Believe our old friend JBR went to see a few things.

One of his first films The Scarlet Letter was a classic story transformed to reflect the mores, aesthetics and culture of 1973. It is kind of an ultimate 1973 film in some ways

I haven't seen it, but he (and other commentators) have always been dismissive of that film, it's sort of his Boxcar Bertha.

Saw the Scarlett Letter once many years ago but didn’t really like it.

Paris, Texas is good, but I like Jim Jarmusch's Stranger The Paradise from the same year (1984) a lot more. They seem similar in some ways

I have a vague memory of reading somewhere that Stranger Than Paradise was made in part by using leftover film stock given to Jarmusch from Wenders.

Yep, short ends from Wenders' The State of Things. Robby Muller, the cinematographer on Paris, Texas, went on to work with Jarmusch a lot (but not on Stranger Than Paradise).