by ·Comments Off on Paris, Texas (1984, Wim Wenders)

I remembered Red Hat Harry walking though the desert in the opening minutes, and the climax where he talks to estranged wife Nastassja Kinski through the one-way glass, but not the entire hour of movie in between. His brother Dean Stockwell has been raising the estranged couple’s son with wife Aurore Clément (a regular Akerman star) after both parents disappeared. Harry is mute and keeps walking out of situations, even gets kicked off a flight, but Dean wrestles him home and he finally softens up and tries to connect with the kid, usually acting like a kid himself, watching home movies of the parents in happier times. He borrows the truck and enlists the kid in trying to track down his mom via the drive-thru bank where she makes monthly deposits, then they follow her car and that’s how they find the peep show where she’s working for John Lurie. Lurie, Stockwell, Kinski and Stanton have all appeared in David Lynch movies – he might be a fan. After the German road movies I thought I’d rewatch this one in glorious HD before tackling the “ultimate road movie,” Until the End of the World.

I’m not above giving you the overused screenshots:

Claire Denis assisted… I’m not above the most obvious trivia either.

The kid is my age, Kit Carson’s and Karen Black’s son, later starred in a Tobe Hooper movie.

by ·Comments Off on Wrong Move (1975, Wim Wenders)

Adding more characters than Alice in the Cities and a backstory for Rüdiger Vogler’s travels (clearly frustrated at home, his mom gives him money to roam and become the writer he dreams of being). I wasn’t so sure about the move to color film, but I should’ve known to trust Wenders/Müller. Based vaguely on a Goethe story, very freely adapted by Peter Handke, the commentary says they wanted to show a man who sets out to find himself, but doesn’t.

The crew: Vogler, actress Hanna Schygulla (a couple years after Petra von Kant), scammy ex-nazi/athlete Hans Blech (also of Wenders’ Scarlet Letter which sounds bad), mute teen acrobat Nastassja Kinski (in her debut), and poet Peter Kern (in a couple Fassbinders the same year). The movie is definitely being weird on purpose, and the group is carefree until they meet a suicidal industrialist who ruins the vibe, then they begin to turn on each other.

now playing: Emmanuelle and The Conversation and Watch Out, We’re Mad!

Wenders belatedly realized they were shooting in the same hotel as Machorka-Muff so he paid tribute by having our heroes watch a Straub/Huillet movie on TV. This won all the German film awards that year, sharing some with Alexander Kluge & Edgar Reitz. I wrote “Alice in the Cities as mission statement, philosophy of photography and travel,” but I’m not sure I knew what I meant by that – anyway, looking forward to the third road movie and exploring some of the box set extras.