Wim Wenders explains why winning the Palme d’Or was “terrible”
Wim Wenders was a key figurehead in the New German Cinema movement alongside filmmakers such as Werner Herzog, Margarethe von Trotta, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. Beginning in 1962, a group of young filmmakers created the Oberhausen Manifesto, claiming: “The old cinema is dead. We believe in the new cinema.” Wenders was only 16 at this point; however, he later came to align himself with the group’s view of revitalising German cinema.
Discussing the beginning of his filmmaking career, Wenders said: “When we started out, German cinema was dead. There was no industry that would have supported us. It was our mutual support that enabled us to continue. Not one of us was known in our own country until we all came back with reviews from London, New York or Paris. You had to be acclaimed somewhere else first.”
After attempting to study medicine, and then philosophy, the indecisive filmmaker dropped out of university to become a painter in Paris. After failing to gain a place in French film school, Wenders became an engraver at Johnny Friedlaender’s studio in Montparnasse, and it was during this time that he fell in love with cinema. Securing a place at the University of Television and Film Munich, Wenders created various short films during his time at school, culminating in his graduation film and debut feature, Summer in the City, shot on 16mm and dedicated to The Kinks.
After the release of his subsequent feature films, The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty, a “fantastically strange, lugubrious existential crime noir,” and period drama The Scarlet Letter, Wenders became frustrated by his output. Recalling that period of his life, he said: “I had made three films which owed their style to the cinema I liked. I said: ‘I’m going to give it all up. If that’s film-making, I don’t want to do it any more.’”
Luckily, the filmmaker didn’t give up, instead channelling his energy into his beautiful 1974 drama Alice in the Cities. Despite evoking similarities to Paper Moon, Wenders hadn’t actually seen Peter Bogdanovich’s 1973 film when he started making Alice. After meeting Samuel Fuller, the American director convinced Wenders not to abandon his project. Instead, he made some changes to the film and continued its production.
The result is a tender and playful road movie about a lonely writer and photographer who is left to care for a quick-witted young girl. Wenders refers to Alice in the Cities as “my first film because it was the first one where I was purely myself.” From that point, the director began to find his feet, following Alice with The Wrong Move and Kings of the Road, making a road movie trilogy.
Ten years after Alice, Wenders made his best-known and most successful film to date: Paris, Texas. Also employing a road movie theme, the film follows Travis, played magnificently by Harry Dean Stanton, who appears to have been wandering around the deserts in a dissociative state for quite some time. After reuniting with his brother (Dean Stockwell), Travis attempts to reconnect with his young son (Hunter Carson) and relocate his missing wife, Jane (Nastassja Kinski).
The stunning performances, breathtaking cinematography, and well-written script were some of the many factors in the film’s success. Paris, Texas is emotional and raw yet always retains a light-hearted spirit when the film needs it most. Quietly comedic moments undercut moments of deep pain, creating an accurate study of human relationships and the complicated nature of existence.
Paris, Texas won three prizes at the Cannes Film Festival – the Palm d’Or, the FIPRESCI award, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. You would expect Wenders to be ecstatic to have his film so critically lauded, but it caused rather the opposite effect. “It was terrible afterwards,” he says. “It created a huge void in my life for the next three years because everybody expected me to do that all over again, and that was the only thing I didn’t want to do.”
Understandably, the pressure of living up to the success of Paris, Texas occupied Wenders’ mind for quite some time. After releasing a few documentaries, the filmmaker found much success with Wings of Desire in 1987, which won his Best Director accolade at Cannes. Yet since then, Wenders’s subsequent outputs have been rather hit or miss. Whilst three of his documentaries, including Buena Vista Social Club, have been Oscar-nominated, much of his recent fiction has been forgotten about, such as Every Thing Will Be Fine, and Don’t Come Knocking.
Although his more recent fiction films have not resonated as strongly as his earlier works, Wender’s influence on the film industry cannot be ignored. Paris, Texas remains one of cinema’s finest offerings, enduring with delicacy and tenderness despite its difficult subject matter.
