Details by Film
Alice in the Cities
1974/113min.Streaming Options
Wrong Move
1975/104min.Streaming Options
Kings of the Road
1976/176/min.Streaming Options
Alice in the Cities
The first of the road films that would come to define the career of Wim Wenders, the magnificent Alice in the Cities is an emotionally generous and luminously shot journey. A German journalist (Rüdiger Vogler) is driving across the United States to research an article; it’s a disappointing trip, in which he is unable to truly connect with what he sees. Things change, however, when he is forced to take a young girl named Alice (Yella Rottländer) with him on his return trip to Germany, after her mother (Lisa Kreuzer)—whom he has just met—leaves the child in his care. Though they initially find themselves at odds, the pair begin to form an unlikely friendship.
Wrong Move
Wim Wenders updates a late-eighteenth-century novel by Goethe with depth and style, transposing it to 1970s West Germany and giving us the story of an aimless writer (Rüdiger Vogler) who leaves his hometown to find himself and befriends a group of other travelers. Seeking inspiration to help him escape his creative funk, he instead discovers the limits of attempts to refashion one’s identity. One of the director’s least seen but earthiest and most devastating soul searches, Wrong Move features standout supporting performances from New German Cinema regulars Hanna Schygulla and Peter Kern and, in her first film appearance, Nastassja Kinski.
Kings of the Road
A roving film projector repairman (Rüdiger Vogler) saves the life of a depressed psychologist (Hanns Zischler) who has driven his Volkswagen into a river, and they end up on the road together, traveling from one rural German movie theater to another. Along the way, the two men, each running from his past, bond over their shared loneliness. Kings of the Road, captured in gorgeous com-positions by cinematographer Robby Müller and dedicated to Fritz Lang, is a love letter to the cinema, a moving and funny tale of male friendship, and a portrait of a country still haunted by war.
Technical Specifications
Supplements
- German-language audio commentary featuring Wim Wenders and actors Rüdiger Vogler and Yella Röttlander
- New interviews with Rüdiger Vogler, Yella Röttlander, and actor Lisa Kreuzer
- Outtakes from the film
- Restoring Time, a 2015 short about the restoration work done by the Wim Wenders Foundation
- Same Player Shoots Again (1967) and Silver City Revisited (1968), two newly restored early short films by Wenders
- Audio commentary featuring Wim Wenders
- New interview with Wim Wenders, directed and conducted by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
- New interviews with actors Rüdiger Vogler and Lisa Kreuzer
- Super 8 footage from the film’s production
- German-language audio commentary featuring Wim Wenders
- Outtakes from the film
- New interviews with actors Rüdiger Vogler, Hanns Zischler, and Lisa Kreuzer
- A book featuring essays on the films by Michael Almereyda, filmmaker Allison Anders, author James Robison, and critic Nick Roddick