Wim Wenders

Wow, I almost missed this entertaining interview with filmmaker Wim Wenders on SFist.

Wenders is mostly known in the U.S. for being responsible for the increasingly sentimental series of angel movies starring Bruno Ganz -- 1987's Wings of Desire was the first and best, while Faraway, So Close! jumped the shark -- but film geeks (like I once was) treasure his early stuff:
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
Alice in the Cities
Wrong Movement -- the best road movie ever made
Kings of the Road
and finally, in 1977, The American Friend with Bruno Ganz, Dennis Hopper, and a raft of obscure European and American film directors -- one of my favorite movies ever.

After that he had his ill-fated American stint (he did Hammett in 1982 for Coppola's Zoetrope Pictures, leading Coppola to buy and rename the Zim's Coffee House "Wim's"; it's now the Café Niebaum-Coppola) and also did the better-received Paris, Texas, then moved back to Europe and resumed making good stuff.

It tells you a lot about the late 80s and the emotional and moral exhaustion of the time -- not to mention the bankruptcy of cinema -- that Wings of Desire was welcomed as a masterpiece. It's still a good, pretty, and sometimes moving film, but the sheer fact that it paved the way for the sentimental sequel makes me question the value of the original film.

One of his strangest movies, and one few people ever saw -- I'm one of the relative few to have seen it in a theater -- was 2000's The Million Dollar Hotel, starring Mel Gibson of all people. Unbeliveable miscasting, yet the film is still watchable.

But nothing can beat the pleasure of watching Hopper and Ganz in The American Friend. Based on an amalgam of Patricia Highsmith's books about Tom Ripley, the film revolves around art fraud, a hoaxed illness, and a Mafia war. It's set in some strange, soon-to-be redeveloped parts of Hamburg, on a high-speed train, in the Paris Metro, and on the soon-to-be demolished West Side Highway in NYC.

Rich, saturated reds and greens dominate the palette. Hitchcockian thriller music accompanies the action. And this was Hopper's comeback role, the job (aside from Hoosiers) that restored him to the good graces of Hollywood financiers and allowed them to take a chance on casting him again. He's funny, weird, and his physical presence is completely not-on -- he looks exactly like what he was at the time, a recovering addict. A totally terrific movie.

Oh -- did I say I used to be a film geek?