Wim and Vigour - Wim Wenders Collection
The Scarlet Letter SSS<br/>The Wrong Move SSS<br/>The American Friend SSS<br/>Lightning Over Water SSSS<br/>Room 666 SSSS<br/>Paris, Texas SSSS<br/>Tokyo-Ga SSS<br/>Wings Of Desire SSSS<br/>Notebooks On Cities & Clothes SSS<br/>A Trick Of The Light SSSS<br/>
| 11 Apr 2007
One of the filmmakers' filmmakers, Wim Wenders' name has managed to become synonymous with an entire genre – the road movie – though he has actually experimented with many forms of cinema over his career span of forty years. Always simmering on the level between mainstream renown and arthouse rebel, his projects have ranged from big-budget flop, Until The End Of The World (an underrated futuristic European co-production that pre-dated 1997's The Fifth Element) and Bono-scripted The Million Dollar Hotel to low-budget hit The Buena Vista Social Club - the film that put Cuban 'son' music on the map.
This ten-disc box set includes a selection of his films that covers his output well. On it are some of his best-loved: Wings of Desire, a tale of unseen angels in Berlin, the cross-culture story The American Friend starring Dennis Hopper, and of course Paris, Texas. More interesting are the films previously little seen, or unseen completely. Wrong Move is a Goethe adaptation that shows the interest in 'life as travelling/travelling as life' that he shares with fellow German auteur Werner Herzog, and has an appearance by a young Nastassja Kinski. The earlier A Scarlet Letter (remade by Hollywood with Demi Moore and Gary Oldman) shows a village stifled by its surroundings and prejudices in a way reminiscent of Dogville, and there is also the more recent A Trick of The Light, which documents the German contribution to the birth of cinema, shot mainly on an old hand-cranked silent camera.
The most interesting, though, are the documentaries which show Wenders in conversation with his idols and colleagues: Yazujiro Ozu in Tokyo-Ga (check out the recent release of some of his films below), Nicholas Ray in Lightning Over Water (director of Rebel Without A Cause), and a variety in Room 666. Shot in 1982 at that year's Cannes Film Festival, Wenders placed a camera and tape recorder in said room and invited a selection of filmmakers to give their opinions on the future of cinema. Included are a poetic Godard, a chilled Herzog, a financially-obsessed Spielberg (this was the year of ET after all), and a confused Antonioni. It's a great insight into the futility of prediction (magnetic tape was supposed to have taken over by now) and will act as a good companion piece to To Each His Cinema, a portmanteau film being made for the 60th Cannes festival this year, which also features Wenders and concerns filmmakers' views on cinema.
A Notebook On Cities & Clothes pretty much does what it says on the tin: a documentary on the fashion industry, something Wenders isn't particularly interested in to start with, but seems to take a shine to as events progress.
To attempt to sum up such a prolific filmmaker in one concise edition of films would otherwise seem impossible, but this collection does a pretty good job, featuring the films that hardcore fans would want to see again as well as a few choice surprises. They add up to an insight into the filmmaker himself, a man in love with the idea of cinema, who is still able to perceive what that means differently each time.
This ten-disc box set includes a selection of his films that covers his output well. On it are some of his best-loved: Wings of Desire, a tale of unseen angels in Berlin, the cross-culture story The American Friend starring Dennis Hopper, and of course Paris, Texas. More interesting are the films previously little seen, or unseen completely. Wrong Move is a Goethe adaptation that shows the interest in 'life as travelling/travelling as life' that he shares with fellow German auteur Werner Herzog, and has an appearance by a young Nastassja Kinski. The earlier A Scarlet Letter (remade by Hollywood with Demi Moore and Gary Oldman) shows a village stifled by its surroundings and prejudices in a way reminiscent of Dogville, and there is also the more recent A Trick of The Light, which documents the German contribution to the birth of cinema, shot mainly on an old hand-cranked silent camera.
The most interesting, though, are the documentaries which show Wenders in conversation with his idols and colleagues: Yazujiro Ozu in Tokyo-Ga (check out the recent release of some of his films below), Nicholas Ray in Lightning Over Water (director of Rebel Without A Cause), and a variety in Room 666. Shot in 1982 at that year's Cannes Film Festival, Wenders placed a camera and tape recorder in said room and invited a selection of filmmakers to give their opinions on the future of cinema. Included are a poetic Godard, a chilled Herzog, a financially-obsessed Spielberg (this was the year of ET after all), and a confused Antonioni. It's a great insight into the futility of prediction (magnetic tape was supposed to have taken over by now) and will act as a good companion piece to To Each His Cinema, a portmanteau film being made for the 60th Cannes festival this year, which also features Wenders and concerns filmmakers' views on cinema.
A Notebook On Cities & Clothes pretty much does what it says on the tin: a documentary on the fashion industry, something Wenders isn't particularly interested in to start with, but seems to take a shine to as events progress.
To attempt to sum up such a prolific filmmaker in one concise edition of films would otherwise seem impossible, but this collection does a pretty good job, featuring the films that hardcore fans would want to see again as well as a few choice surprises. They add up to an insight into the filmmaker himself, a man in love with the idea of cinema, who is still able to perceive what that means differently each time.
Release Date: 26 March.