Wim Wenders Collection (Axiom, prices vary)FEW EUROPEAN DIRECTORS HAVE been as obsessed with the mythology and iconography of America as Wim Wenders, one of the leading lights of the New German cinema in the 1970s. His obsession
has shaped his films in interesting and distinctive ways. True, of late there's been very little to get excited about (his last couple of films haven't even been released in the UK), but as the DVD release of six of his best films from the 1970s and 1980s proves, Wenders understands better than most how important the cultural exchange between American and European cinema has been.
Though this would find its clearest expression in 1984's appropriately titled Paris, Texas, he was grappling with similar ideas a decade earlier with the remarkable Alice in the Cities (£19.99 ). Sort of a European answer to Easy Rider and Two-Lane Blacktop, but more intellectually rigorous and profound than either, it revolves around a German writer (Rüdiger Vogler) numbed by an assignment to travel across the US. He decides to return home, but en route meets a German woman who dumps her nine-year-old daughter on him on a whim, entrusting this stranger to take her back to Europe without her.
The bond the pair form is touchingly, unsentimentally handled, as Wenders subtly shows how hitting the road with this pint-sized sidekick helps the hero reconnect with the world. In a way this was also the beginning of Wenders's own cinematic journey. Working again with Vogler, his next two films, The Wrong Move (£15.99) and Kings of the Road (£19.99), formed a loose trilogy with Alice in the Cities, and showed an increasing ability to harness the essence of the American road movie in a European context.
Having said that, The Wrong Move may be a little too in tune with its wannabe writer protagonist, since the film's aspirations momentarily exceed Wenders abilities to execute them at this point. Still, it lays the groundwork for Kings of the Road, a three-hour state-of-the-German-nation film, as seen from the perspective of a rootless technician (Vogler) who travels the country repairing cinema projectors. Like Alice in the Cities, the film was shot in black and white to better capture the haunted nature of the country during its difficult post-War/pre-unification times.
Moving away from the road movie, The American Friend (£15.99) saw Wenders try his hand at the moral thriller. It's a flawed but fascinating version of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game in which Wenders sidelines Ripley (Dennis Hopper) to tell the story of a terminally ill man (Bruno Ganz) morally corrupted by a gangster who wants him to kill for cash.
This was the film that began to open the American market for Wenders, and he capitalised on this with Paris, Texas (£15.99). Making the country a strange, eerie place, this was Wenders's first truly American picture and his biggest success. Yet it was a return to Germany that yielded his most sublime, celebrated film, Wings of Desire (£15.99). It's unfortunate, then, that after finding his audience with these movies, he's yet to make another that connects in the same way. It's also a cruel irony that after carefully incorporating the best America had to offer in his films, Hollywood would remake Wings of Desire as the abysmal Meg Ryan film City of Angels. Maybe Wenders has just fallen out of love with America.
The full article contains 585 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
