Cinematic Style On Display
June 08, 2016
Film Info
- Germany, France, United States
- 1984
- 147 minutes
- Color
- 1.78:1
- English
- Spine #501
New German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas, a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sam Shepard. Paris, Texas follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski). From this simple setup, Wenders and Shepard produce a powerful statement on codes of masculinity and the myth of the American family, as well as an exquisite visual exploration of a vast, crumbling world of canyons and neon.
Cast
| Travis | Harry Dean Stanton |
| Walt | Dean Stockwell |
| Jane | Nastassja Kinski |
| Hunter | Hunter Carson |
| Anne | Aurore Clément |
| Dr. Ulmer | Bernhard Wicki |
Credits
| Director | Wim Wenders |
| Producer | Don Guest |
| Written by | Sam Shepard |
| Adaptation by | L. M. Kit Carson |
| Executive producer | Chris Sievernich |
| Music | Ry Cooder |
| Director of photography | Robby Müller |
| Editing | Peter Przygodda |
| Art director | Kate Altman |
Disc Features
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Wim Wenders, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Audio commentary featuring Wenders
- Video interview with Wenders by German journalist Roger Willemsen
- Excerpts from a 1990 documentary on Wenders, featuring interviews with Wenders, cinematographer Robby Müller, composer Ry Cooder, actors Harry Dean Stanton, Dennis Hopper, Peter Falk, and Hanns Zischler, novelist Patricia Highsmith, and director Samuel Fuller
- New video interviews with filmmakers Allison Anders and Claire Denis
- “Wim Wenders Hollywood April ’84,” a segment from the French television program Cinéma cinémas, showing Wenders and Cooder at work on the score
- Deleted scenes and Super 8 home movies
- Gallery of Wenders’s location-scouting photos
- Behind-the-scenes photos by Robin Holland
- Theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Nick Roddick, interviews with Stanton, writer Sam Shepard, and actors Nastassja Kinski and Dean Stockwell, and excerpts from Wenders’s book of photos Written in the West
New cover by Neil Kellerhouse
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Wim Wenders: Songs from Along the Road
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“One of the discoveries of the road movies was not only that you could travel and work and make a film at the same time, and improvise it, but that rock and roll could also be, in the true . . . Read more »
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Like Flying Blind Without Instruments: On the Turning Point in Paris, Texas
By January 27, 2010
This piece first appeared in the 1991 Wim Wenders collection The Logic of Images: Essays and Conversation (Faber and Faber), translated by Michael Hofmann. The story’s about a man who turns up . . . Read more »
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I have been going to press screenings at the Cannes Film Festival for more than twenty-five years, but only twice have I been absolutely sure—blindingly, heart-racingly certain—that I have just . . . Read more »
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Paris, Texas: On the Road Again
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I have been going to press screenings at the Cannes Film Festival for more than twenty-five years, but only twice have I been absolutely sure—blindingly, heart-racingly certain—that I have just . . . Read more »
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Wim Wenders: Songs from Along the Road
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“One of the discoveries of the road movies was not only that you could travel and work and make a film at the same time, and improvise it, but that rock and roll could also be, in the true . . . Read more »
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Wim Wenders’s haunting family drama Paris, Texas has always had particularly ardent admirers. And as evidenced by recent reviews of the Criterion DVD and Blu-ray editions of the film, time has . . . Read more »
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Like Flying Blind Without Instruments: On the Turning Point in Paris, Texas
By January 27, 2010
This piece first appeared in the 1991 Wim Wenders collection The Logic of Images: Essays and Conversation (Faber and Faber), translated by Michael Hofmann. The story’s about a man who turns up . . . Read more »
Film Essays
Paris, Texas: On the Road Again
By January 27, 2010
I have been going to press screenings at the Cannes Film Festival for more than twenty-five years, but only twice have I been absolutely sure—blindingly, heart-racingly certain—that I have just . . . Read more »
