THE ROAD TRILOGY (1974-1976, Wenders)
Criterion Collection, Blu-ray Box Set, Release Date May 31, 2016
Review by Christopher S. Long
I wish I could come up with a more
passionate argument for Wim Wenders' last few decades worth of
feature film output than the claim that “Don't Come Knocking”
wasn't completely terrible. But that's all I got. Still, I feel
protective of the former New German Cinema titan when critics take
too much pleasure in celebrating his decline. “Quite possibly Europe's worst working filmmaker?” C'mon, there's always Gaspar
Noe.
Besides, “The Salt of the Earth”
(2014) was kind of a knockout, even if it wasn't all Wenders. OK,
maybe that doesn't quite make up for “The End of Violence” (1997)
or the lingering horror of “The Million Dollar Hotel” (2000).
Starting at “written by Peter Handke” and taking a detour to
“based on a story by Bono” has got to be the most depressing road
trip of all.
Of course, the man who directed “Paris, Texas” (1984) and “Wings of
Desire” (1987) has nothing to make up for. Add in The Road Trilogy
and you've earned lifelong bragging rights. Even if The Road Trilogy
was only declared a trilogy after the fact by American critic Richard
Roud and even if the middle film in the trilogy isn't nearly a match
for the bookends (or even much of a road movie), this crowning
achievement of Wenders' peak period is enough to secure a legacy, and
also to make for one heck of a new box set from the Criterion
Collection.
The Road Trilogy might not have been
shot as an official trilogy, but the three films are united by
several defining elements: Wenders' laconic, unhurried direction; the
equally laconic Rudiger Vogler as lead actor; and spectacular
cinematography from a young up-and-comer named Robby Muller. The
trilogy is also suffused with bursts of American rock 'n roll and a
lingering melancholy containing equal parts of fatalistic resignation
and suppressed passion. And, of course, the road.
Vogler had never starred in a film
before, but the trilogy is unthinkable without him. His piercing eyes
perched above a thick, elongated nose could give him a sinister look
in the right circumstances; in these films, he often seems lost in
contemplation, if not outright wallowing in his own misery. Looking a
little unkempt even when dressed neatly, he seems comfortable only in
the transitory space of the road. This isn't a man who struggles into
a tie and reports for the day shift.
In “Alice In The Cities” (1974),the
first film in the trilogy and also the film that served as a breakout
for Wenders on the international festival circuit, Vogler plays
Phillip Winter, a German journalist assigned to write a story about
America. Driving along the east coast from one neon-drenched motel
room to another, Phillip finds himself unable to articulate his
experience, producing only a series of Polaroid snapshots which also
provide insufficient insight because the picture “never shows what
you just saw.” His New York-based editor has even less use for the
Polaroids and banishes Phillip back to Germany for missing his
deadline.
At the airport, Winter meets a mother
(Lisa Kreuzer) and her eight-year-old daughter Alice (Yella
Rottlander), also planning to limp back to Germany after an
emotionally and financially draining experience in America. The
emigres join forces, but soon mom leaves to attend to unfinished
business in the Big Apple, asking this new stranger to bring Alice
back to Amsterdam (they can't fly to Germany because of a labor
strike) where mom will meet them in a few days.
You can probably guess that mom doesn't
show on schedule, prompting the film's main action. Phillip finds
himself both in charge of the precocious girl and also entirely in
her thrall as he must rely on her strands of faulty memory to try to
reunite her with her European relatives. In a rented car, the
unlikely couple (more big brother-little sister than father-daughter)
crawl along cramped streets in German towns and cities looking for
Alice's grandmother's house and slowly bonding even as the
independent spirits grow increasingly irritated with each other's
presence.
Vogler shifts effortlessly from sullen
to sunny, all modulated by an inner grief. Phillip is moody, but also
kind and he is genuinely fond of Alice even though, as a man of the
road, he's not much for responsibilities or burdens. Vogler also
deploys his marvelous wry smile to great strategic effect. Alice is
more than Phillip's equal, one of the most fully realized little
girls cinema has ever produced. In one early scene, Phillip pretends
to blow out the lights on the Empire State Building. Little Alice is
initially amazed by this bit of magic, then spies Phillip's watch,
vaguely suspecting the truth: he was just waiting for midnight. She
is clever and petulant, projecting a confidence beyond her years in
one moment, then retreating to the bathroom to cry in the next.
Rottlander, only seven at the time, is so good it's hard to believe
she would only play one more film role.
Europe winds up looking an awful lot
like America with another series of motel rooms (less neon though)
and the idiot drone of “barbarous television” dominating spaces
not lucky enough to be graced with a jukebox, always a holy relic for
Wenders and almost always playing American rock or blues. One of the
miracles of the film is that while the sights we see are often
shabby, they spark to life in luminous black-and-white photography by
Robby Muller, then in the early stages of one of the greatest careers
of the modern era, one shamelessly unrecognized by a clueless
Academy. In a shot that has no business being so gorgeous, Phillip
pulls back the curtains on a window to reveal a neon tableau: a
gaudy, giant arrow pointing to the sign for the Skyway Motel. It
looks like a lost Edward Hopper painting: “Room By The Highway.”
Where “Alice” presented life on the
road as a decidedly low-budget affair, “Kings of the Road” (1976)
traces a route through the no-frills apocalypse of the present:
abandoned gas stations, worm-eaten roadside food stands,
monochromatic landscapes devoid of signs of human life. Did anyone
ever live in this place?
Bruno Winter (Vogler again) is a
traveling film projectionist who wrestles his oversized truck along
West German roads bordering their eastern cousin (faraway, so close)
in order to wrestle equally oversized projectors into working order
for one more night of providing light and shadow plays to sparse,
disinterested audiences hoping for porn. Here, size truly matters.
These glorious projectors are hulking machines made of metal and they
contain fire! Yes, film used to be a tangible object with weight and
volume and heat and power, nothing downloadable here. Ah well. Made
forty years ago, Wenders' film was already bemoaning the slow death
of cinema as a communal event; today it's a eulogy for a friend long
since buried, yet remembered every single day.
The ambitionless Bruno can't even be
bothered to wear much more than a pair of farmer's overalls most
days, but a semblance of structure enters his peripatetic existence
when he witnesses a Volkswagen Beetle plunging headfirst into the
Elbe River. The driver calmly gathers his suitcase and tromps back to
shore while Bruno watches idly. This soggy soul is Robert Lander
(Hanns Zischler), just as lost as Bruno, though for different reasons
that will eventually become clear despite Bruno's rejection of any
attempts to provide backstory (smart man, that Bruno.)
For nearly three hours, Bruno and
Robert trudge along through more immaculately grubby Muller
black-and-white landscapes. If it seems they have no purpose in mind,
perhaps that's because Wenders shot without a script, or at least no
script aside from a map of Germany with a few small towns marked off,
the only ones that still had theaters. The tiny film crew lived and
traveled together, shooting whatever they passed on the road, often
with dialogue written shortly before each day's shoot.
Vogler and Zischler develop the easy
chemistry so essential to the road movie, playing off each other
while also maintaining their own trajectories. Both of their lives
are partially defined by the absence of women, with missing mothers
as crucial as unavailable lovers. They won't really solve any of
their problems – who ever does? But, yeah, they learn a few lessons
from their time together, not the least being that there's a little
more compassion in the world than a self-absorbed cynic is keen to
acknowledge.
Did I skip over the middle entry in the
trilogy? It's a little tough to describe. “Wrong Move” (1975) is
one of those movies. You know the kind. One of those movies where the
main character meets a guy on a train and that guy always has a
nosebleed and plays the harmonica and he travels with a mute acrobat
girl. And then they all meet a really bad poet who takes them to
visit his uncle except he goes to the wrong house but that's OK
because the guy who lives at this random house was about to commit
suicide and he likes to deliver long monologues about loneliness and
then one of them turns out to have been a Nazi. You know, one of
those movies.
Writer James Robison argues eloquently
in favor of “Wrong Move” in his essay in the accompanying
Criterion booklet, but not enough to sway my feelings about this
exasperating and tedious exercise in seemingly random behavior. The
great playwright Peter Handke, a longtime Wenders friend and
collaborator, adapted the script very, very loosely from Goethe's
bildungsroman “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.” Both Robison
(in his essay) and Wenders (in an interview on the disc) explain that
Handke actually wrote an antithesis to Goethe's story about a young
writer who goes on a journey of self-realization, constructing
instead a journey that doesn't change the main character in the
slightest. Leaving home was the first of many “wrong moves” for
our hapless non-hero.
Fair enough, but the characters are so
thinly drawn and their behavior and dialogue so infuriatingly
arbitrary it's difficult to take anything or anyone seriously, though
I must confront the distinct possibility that the film is operating
on a wavelength I simply don't receive. In any case, Vogler is back
as the lead and we are treated both to the radiant Hanna Schygulla in
a supporting role and a 13-year-old Nastassja Kinski (who could
easily pass for 20) making her film debut as the aforementioned
acrobat. So that's something. Maybe I would have liked it more if it
wasn't the only part of the trilogy shot in color. I'm trying hard
here.
I won't end on a sour note. The
bookends to this unofficial trilogy are simply spectacular, some of
the finest works the New German Cinema ever produced, and two of the
best road movies of all time. That's more than enough to recommend
the box set, and also to secure Wenders' place in world cinema in
perpetuity. As long he doesn't work with Bono again.
Video:
As explained both in print and some of
the features on the discs, many of Wenders' early films survived in a
very perilous state. He also lost ownership of some of the negatives
in an unfortunate business venture, so the process to restore them,
headed by the Wim Wenders Foundation, he been an extensive and
desperately needed project.
The negative for “Alice In The
Cities,” for example, was so badly cracked and warped it had to be
entirely digitally restored with some scenes in the original 16 mm
negative supplemented by a later 35 mm duplicate.
Having said all that, it's amazing how
great these restored transfers look. All three films are presented in
1.66:1 aspect ratios. For “Wrong Move” and “Kings of the Road”
this means they are shown in their original aspect ratio. In the case
of “Alice” this means both a change and a return to the
director's vision: it was released in 1.37:1 as mandated by the
company that commissioned the film, but Wenders and Muller always
framed for 1.66:1.
All three films look great with these
new digital restorations. “Alice” and “Kings” both feature
sharp contrast in the rich black-and-white imagery, appropriately
grainy throughout. Image detail is sharp, and the total package is a
completely immersive experience. Amazing considering how damaged the
original negatives were. “Wrong Move” shows off a warm but
unobtrusive color palette with crystal clear image quality.
Audio:
“Alice” gets a linear PCM Mono
track, the other two films arrive with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
surround tracks. Lossless audio is crisp and robust for all three
films, though obviously not too dynamic on “Alice.” Optional
English subtitles support the German audio. For “Alice” and
“Kings” you can choose a second subtitle option which provides
English subs for the German commentary track.
Extras:
Each film is housed in a separate
keepcase, all three of which are tucked alongside the thick insert
booklet into a cardboard box that houses the set.
Each film is accompanied by a
commentary track, though none of them are new to this set. “Alice
In The Cities” has a German-language commentary (with optional
English subtitles) featuring Wenders, Vogler, and Yella Rottlander.
It was originally recorded in 2009. “Wrong Move” comes with a
2002 commentary by Wenders. “Kings of the Road” gets a 2005
German commentary (with optional English subtitles) by Wenders.
The “Alice In The Cities” disc also
offers a 15-minute feature titled “Restoring Time” in which
Wenders explains the project of the Wim Wenders Foundation. Restoring
the negative was labor-intensive enough, but on films like “The
Goalie's Anxiety At The Penalty Kick” (1972) they had to record new
music because they couldn't clear rights to the old songs.
The disc also includes a lengthy
Interview feature (2016, 27 min) combining interviews with Vogler,
Rottlander, and Lisa Kreuzer. The most interesting bit is Rottlander
explaining how Wenders would find a way to combine play with work in
dealing with his child star. There are also 16 mintues of Outtakes
and On-Set Footage though none of it is particularly revealing.
We also get two early short films by
Wenders. “Same Player Shoots Again” (1967, 12 min.) repeats the
same two-minute shot five times, each time with a different color
tint. Wenders explains that the structuring principle was that of a
pinball player who gets to shoot five balls. “Silver City
Revisited” (1968, 33 min.) is most interesting for its soundtrack,
which employs long stretches of scratchy near-silence with occasional
musical outbursts. Wenders was recording directly from some old
records in the attic of his film school. The visuals move between
busy city streets and deserted rural roads with a guest appearance by
The Rolling Stones.
The “Wrong Move” disc features a
lengthy interview with Wenders, conducted by filmmaker Michael
Almereyda (2016, 64 min.) Wenders discusses the entire trilogy as
well as some of his other work, including how he turned his
disappointment with his adaptation of “The Scarlet Letter” (1973)
into the success of “Alice.” Wenders is quite revealing here, and
tells a phenomenal story about the surprising, pivotal role a
generous Samuel Fuller played in convincing Wenders to stick with
“Alice” when he wanted to abandon it.
The disc also includes another
interview (2016, 22 min.) with Vogler and Lisa Kreuzer and some
Super-8 Footage shot on the set of “Wrong Move” (4 min.)
The “Kings of the Road” disc
includes yet another lengthy interview (2016, 31 min.) with Vogler,
Zischler, and Kreuzer. This was my favorite of the interviews as they
talk about the intimate experience they and the crew had living
together on the road for more than two months while shooting a film
nobody knew much about. The final extra is another 21 minutes of
Outtakes and On-Set Footage – nothing surprising here, though some
footage of Wenders and Muller playing around on set is neat.
The square-bound insert booklet
includes an overview of the trilogy by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
and essays on each film by, respectively, filmmaker Allison Anders,
writer James Robison, and writer Nick Roddick.
Final Thoughts:
I think we can all agree this review is
long enough already. You like a good road movie? This is where to look.
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