Paris, Texas

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Film Description

Paris, Texas is probably Wim Wenders' most well known, critically acclaimed, and successful movie, winning a number of international prizes including the Cannes Palme d'Or for Best Film in 1984.

This unusual road movie, with screenplay by acclaimed playwright Sam Shepard, tells the tale of Travis, a man lost in his own private hell. Presumed dead for four years, he reappears from the desert on the Mexico border, world-weary and an amnesiac.

He traces his brother Walt who is bringing up Hunter, his seven-year-old son, his ex-wife Jane having abandoned him at Walt's door several years before. As virtual strangers, Hunter and Travis begin to build a wary friendship and conspire to find Jane and bring her back to be a real family.

With extraordinary performances from Harry Dean Stanton as Travis and Natassja Kinski as Jane, the film also boasts a soundtrack by Ry Cooder, ideally suited to the film's sun-bleached landscapes and melancholy undertones.

Film Information

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Reviews & Articles

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Review by Graeme Hobbs on 2nd February 2004

One of the most beautifully shot films that you will see, with Wenders’ trademark use of primaries and green flooding or pointing up nearly every frame. How this use of colour never becomes formulaic or tiresome is one of Wenders’ great skills – that and knowing how to let a film breathe so it creates its own rhythm. (One slight quibble with this shortest of long films is that some of the takes could have been even more languorous then they are – I felt rushed on to the next scene a few times.) The film’s rhythm is also assisted by Ry Cooder’s guitar track, which preserves the improvised immediacy of a live accompanist.

It’s a lonesome, broken tale that leaves all its main characters at a new beginning – none of them comfortable or certain. No-one says too much, but the film answers all its own questions. We know the whys that have led eveybody to the point at which they are left at the end. Now they all just have to carry on as best they can. It’s at this point that the film opens out into the world: that woman and child in a hotel block; that man driving down a highway; that couple in a now quiet house overlooking an airport; these people are all around us, full of their own stories; carrying on.

Does Travis ever countenance the thought of reunting with Jane? Maybe before he sees her but as soon as he does, then no. He knows himself too well, and knows that four years walking through deserts has not burnt out his capacity to love her to distraction and to jealousy.

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Review by John Davies on 14th August 1999

Lost, speechless, wilderness-wandering Stanton searches for his wife and finds himself. THE cult road movie, Wenders' unanimous Cannes Palme d'Or winner fuses American and European cinema at a new sublime level. Cooder's haunting guitar, Muller's stunning photography, Kinski an icon and the peepshow scene transcendent in its intimacy: few films come close. JD.

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Collections & Lists

This film is part of the following Film Collections

Palme D'Or Winners

Including: All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now Redux, Blow-up, Brief Encounter (Lean, 1945), Dancer in The Dark, Elephant, Kagemusha, La Dolce Vita, Marty, MASH.

Road Movies

Including: Badlands, Baise-Moi, Bonnie And Clyde, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, Central Station, Convoy, Dead End (2003), Detour (1945), Dogma, Drôle de Félix.

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This film is part of the following Customer Film Lists

Road Movies by Myles McLeod

I love those rambling road and river journeys that take characters on an unpredictable amble from the normal to the surreal, paranormal, quirky or plain bizarre.

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