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Post by mortsahlfan on Aug 29, 2019 18:04:18 GMT
I just completed it.
Alice In The Cities - 8/10 Wrong Move - 7/10 Kings of the Road - 6/10
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Post by petrolino on Aug 29, 2019 20:18:49 GMT
I like these movies.
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Post by mortsahlfan on Aug 29, 2019 21:33:54 GMT
I liked "Paris, Texas" (8/10) very much.. Kind of a road movie, but without Vogler (who I didn't care for anyway).
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Post by wmcclain on Aug 29, 2019 22:39:31 GMT
Alice in the Cities (1974), directed by Wim Wenders. A German journalist has not gotten a story he wanted during a road trip across America: he says that once you get outside of New York City it all looks the same. A horrible journey with bad TV and radio and cheap motels. He seems teutonically sour and tends to kick his appliances. At the airport he helps a German woman and her little girl and keeps them company while waiting for a flight. Mom has to deal with a boyfriend and leaves him a note: "Take Alice to Amsterdam and I'll meet you there". He does but she doesn't. So he and Alice drive around Holland and Germany looking for her grandmother. Fed up with babysitting he drops her at a police station and goes to an outdoor Chuck Berry concert, which improves his mood. He misses Alice and when they are reunited they continue their journey. A beautifully made road film. The black-and-white 16mm photography from moving cars and trains tends to make both America and Europe look like ordinary, day-to-day, slightly shabby places. Photographed by Robby Müller. Big grain can be beautiful! Every scene ends with a fade to black. Could this be made today? The presumption of perversion and sex crime would poison the whole concept. There is no implication of that at all here. Philip instantly becomes Alice's surrogate father and they get on as well as any family, sometimes happy, sometimes fighting. As he becomes used to her she softens him, making him more humane. The 10-year old Alice acts very naturally and is as complex as any character of her age as I have seen. Of the cast, only Rüdiger Vogler as Philip and Lisa Kreuzer as the Mom had extensive film careers. The score is simple and meditative, neither bleak nor jolly. A lot of pop music of the era floats in through the windows. According to the wikipedia article Wenders had financing for the film when he saw Paper Moon (1973), thought the stories were too similar and wanted to cancel. Director Sam Fuller helped him with a rewrite, saying "Never cancel when you already have the money!" Available on Blu-ray from Criterion, made from a new scan of the original 16mm negative. The film was originally distributed in 1.37 aspect ratio; the director wanted 1.66 and that is restored here. Selectable English subtitles only for the German language parts. The commentary track is in German -- a conversation between the director and Yella Rottländer who played Alice -- and also has selectable English subtitles. 
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Post by wmcclain on Aug 29, 2019 22:40:21 GMT
Wrong Move (1975), directed by Wim Wenders. A young man wants to be a writer but doesn't know what to write about. He takes a road trip through Germany to find himself, starting from his home in a North Sea port town and ending in the mountains at the southern tip of the country. Because he is cold and doesn't like people, of course he picks up an assortment of characters along the way:
- An old soldier and his silent granddaughter, who work as street performers and perhaps pickpockets.
- An actress who finds him appealing.
- A would-be poet.
- A lonely industrialist in a decrepit old mansion.
As happens in real life, the travelers wax philosophical, although real people seldom speak in such well-formed paragraphs. They seem to need to find a philosophy of life before really living, which perhaps makes more sense on the Continent than in the Anglo-American tradition. I wasn't able to follow their existential difficulties. A little romance and a small bit of actual drama: our hero figures out that the old man is a former nazi officer who sings a bitter song about "Rosenthal", which from this and Grand Illusion (1937) I figure is an antisemitic typical Jewish name. I think another character -- "Landau" -- is also a Jew and the old man gives him the evil eye. The ex-nazi sleeps with a whip for self-flagellation but that doesn't stop our hero from regarding him with murderous intent. People traveling, discoursing on imponderables: doesn't sound very interesting, does it? I'm strangely fond of it, perhaps because decades ago I worked my way through the early Wim Wenders shelf at Blockbuster Video and remember them all. Of course, I never really saw these when limited to videotape; the Criterion Blu-ray is a revelation by comparison. Mostly I love the look of the production and the story of how it was made. Robby Müller, the director's usual photographer, produces something much like his work for The American Friend (1977). No storyboards, a tiny crew on the road making up the shots day by day. The images have a fast, unplanned, non-arty look but are still beautifully composed. They had a complete script this time. A favorite sequence: a long walk up a mountain road to an overlook above the Rhine. As they walk and talk we see the way they have come in a series of extended takes. Their "dolly" was the director's Renault 4 which everyone not in front of the camera had to push, giving a fluid, pre-Steadicam look. All natural sound, no dialogue looping. Very little extra lighting. No sets. Jürgen Knieper's discordant score is strangely ominous. About Nastassja Kinski:
- Her first film. She took acting lessons afterwards.
- Discovered in a club where she said she was 16 to get in. When they got her mother involved it turned out she was really 13.
- They did not know she was Klaus Kinski's daughter at first.
- This is a nonspeaking part, which is fine. Her job is to be young and watching.
- You couldn't have done this in an American film: she has a brief nude scene and implied sex. (Our hero was looking for the actress and found the wrong bedroom and a willing Mignon. He stayed).
- Wenders said the hardest part of filming that scene was her uncontrollable giggling, which would set off the rest of the crew for long periods. Watch her face, he says, she's thinking "must not giggle".
- The writer criticized Rüdiger Vogler for keeping his briefs on when laying with her. His response: "Are you kidding? She was 13!" Which makes it cinematically safer, somehow.
Available on Criterion Blu-ray. The director's commentary is from 2002: fond, sometimes sparse. He marvels at how he and his crew worked back then. 
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Post by wmcclain on Aug 29, 2019 22:41:04 GMT
Kings of the Road (1976), written, produced and directed by Wim Wenders. Bruno travels around Germany repairing theater projectors. It is a gypsy life: he lives in his truck and keeps his own schedule. Theaters are declining and it is a small living. One day depressed, perhaps suicidal Robert, driving with his eyes closed, speeds out into a river and loses his car. Bruno picks him up, gives him clothes and, without explanation or much conversation, they travel together for a while. It is a pure road movie: driving, stopping for a while and meeting people, then moving on. It is 2h56m long but flows pretty well. Apart from the setup, everything was improvised on the day. Cinematographer Robby Müller gives a look similar to Alice in the Cities (1974) where the backroads and little towns are shabby and knocked about. That film, this one and Wrong Move (1975) are called the Road Movie trilogy although Wenders did not think of them that way at the time. Featuring Wenders regulars Rüdiger Vogler and Lisa Kreuzer. Some transgressive moments:
- Full frontal uncut Vogler just to show he lives alone in his truck.
- He walks out into the dunes and takes a massive dump on the sand. You watch it thinking, "this is really happening", which is probably what the crew thought.
- We have a quick view of a projectionist masturbating while watching a porn film. I thought an erect penis was an automatic X rating. The IMDB says "United States: Not Rated", so they must not have tried to get it past the MPAA.
A lot of the score is lonesome American steel guitar and dobro. Also some saxophone and art rock that sounds like early Pink Floyd. Other American influences: the novels they read and songs they sing, the Jack Daniels they drink. "The Yanks have conquered our subconscious". I've started noticing how important children are in Wenders' films. Happy, innocent, always in their own golden age. Where do adults go wrong? Newspaper headlines are always bad news; Robert visits his estranged father who runs a small town paper. The film itself has a 1.66 aspect ratio calibration target at the beginning to remind the projectionist to frame it correctly. I've never seen that done before. Available on Blu-ray from Criterion, restored from the original 35mm negative. The director's commentary track is in German with English subtitles. 
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Post by maxwellperfect on Aug 30, 2019 3:03:19 GMT
Have only seen 'Kings of the Road.' Amazing movie.
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