501 Paris, Texas

[Mr Sausage]

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[Sloper]

I was grateful for the excuse to watch this again – I saw it many years ago when I was a teenager, and was disappointed by what I perceived as wooden acting and sentimentality. Now I think it’s very beautiful and sad, so I guess I’m a different person... The acting reminds me of how Rossellini could make seasoned actors seem like non-professionals, and draw something out of them that was both natural and unnatural, like the behaviour of ‘real’ people who feel self-conscious in front of a camera. That’s such a powerful thing to do a in a film like Paris, Texas, which reflects on the mythologising, performance, and artifice of the American identity. The apparent sentimentality is part of that as well, and it makes the (very ambiguous) bleakness of the ending all the more powerful.

The film plays on the classic American motif of what I can only describe as ‘bigness’, in ways that feel endlessly inventive and thought-provoking. Characters are framed against enormous expanses of John Ford deserts, or endless highways, or towering skyscrapers. They talk about the distant past, or the distant future, or the beginning of the universe itself. We have a constant sense of the contexts in which these people operate, the scales on which their lives play out, and the stakes of their decisions, but those contexts, scales, and stakes could be big or small – the fate of these people could be equivalent to that of the entire world, or as insignificant as a tumbleweed. A single composition can suggest both these things at the same time.

The shot that haunted me the most after the film had ended was the one where Travis is walking along a bridge, and the camera tracks with him to keep the busy carriageways behind him in more or less the same part of the shot. It’s a technique I feel like I’ve seen quite often (though I’m blanking on other examples right now) and it’s a great way to juxtapose movement with stasis, while also suggesting a gradual change in perspective. Travis is moving forwards, but also going nowhere. He is surrounded by pathways leading in various directions, but they seem inaccessible to him.

On the soundtrack, alongside the noise of the traffic – Americans circulating in their cars – we hear the voice of a man trapped in a state of delusion and rage, screaming at a world that can’t hear him and doesn’t want to. When Travis finally encounters this man on the bridge, he briefly puts his hand on the man’s back, and then keeps going. Now the camera stays still and watches Travis walk away down the remaining length of the bridge. Has this encounter with the ‘mad prophet’ liberated him and opened up new avenues of possibility, or has it underlined how inescapable his own condition is, and locked him into a path of renunciation and self-isolation?

It's this kind of visual poetry that makes the film’s treatment of ‘American Dream’ dilemmas so rich: the concept of the ‘self-made’ identity, the pioneering spirit, the conflicts between the roles of husband/wife/child and the complex individuals who have to occupy them, and the reckoning with past traumas and abuses. Maybe it helps that I’ve been suffering from an almost obsessive preoccupation with Blonde for the last four months, but there’s something really interesting here about the place of iconic images and clichés in American culture, and the way in which (as with the family roles I mentioned above) people both internalise these and hold them at one remove.

I’m obviously thinking of the peep-show scenes, but also that last detail of the billboard that says ‘Together We Make It Happen’ as Travis drives into oblivion, leaving his family (and the skyscrapers of Houston) behind him. He, Jane, and Hunter have made something happen together; but they have also each acted separately. Travis’s escape at the end means they are conspicuously not ‘together’; his abandonment of Hunter (and the content of his reminiscences about Jane) makes it hard to put much faith in the stability of the mother/son reunion; and the film has left Hunter’s more reliable, loving, American-Dream-like family behind. The billboard expresses the sincere, heart-warming emotional payoff of the ending, but it also seems ominously hollow and ironic, a cynical advertising slogan like the ‘Bank of America’ sunset in Zabriskie Point. I love it when a film makes me feel truly conflicting things and doesn’t try to resolve the conflict – maybe I didn’t love this kind of thing when I was a teenager, and that’s why the film made me so uncomfortable.

[nicolas]

I've made a screenshot comparison between the Criterion BD, the 2019 Studiocanal BD (Éclair grade, 2K restoration from 4K scan) and the new Janus trailer of the 40th Anniversary 4K restoration. I didn't have the time to match the frames 100% but the intention was to show the color differences between the three masters.

https://slow.pics/c/4CifDFKf

[swo17]

Dec 3 4K UHD

[DeprongMori]

If this new 4K UHD encode gets rid of the slowly throbbing black blobs in several scenes in their old Blu-ray release (laundromat and Kinski’s room), I’ll pick this up Day One, even though I don’t have a 4K screen yet.

[kekid]

Will this use the same source (and encode) as the Curzon 4K?

[yoloswegmaster]

Will this use the same source (and encode) as the Curzon 4K?

Same master but different encode, though I doubt there will be any major differences between the 2.

[ryannichols7]

it'll remain to be seen as to whether the new interviews with Wenders on the Curzon are worthwhile. personally think the Criterion is exhaustive as it gets - still maybe one of their best editions of a film by a living director (along with Close Up, which was of course released when Kiarostami was still with us). obviously it helps that the two films are permanently part of my top 20 (Paris, Texas probably being the best film ever made to these eyes), but I feel just about every angle that could be explored regarding the making of this film is right here

maybe a bit eye roll inducing, but the only more "fun" inclusion would be others coming in to talk about it. obviously neither the Criterion or Curzon editions have much in the way of scholarship, which is honestly fine. I think Wenders generally does such a tremendous job discussing his own films, being a student of cinema himself. but obviously this remains a widely beloved film, being a unanimous Palme d'Or winner, so maybe talking to that jury, or to the various people in film who put it in their Letterboxd top 4 videos. U2 of course have stated it inspired The Joshua Tree and their relationship with Wenders. I loved how Criterion did this for Trainspotting, another personal favorite, and getting to hear Jarvis Cocker and Bobby Gillespie show up on a Criterion disc was terrific. alas, that's just asking for a scoop of ice cream on top of an already great cake

I've written about this movie extensively elsewhere, will have to edit down some of the more personal angles and share some of what I've said here

[nicolas]

Got the Curzon today and the VDMS encode is indeed fantastic. Why I’m commenting though is that I was shocked to see that there’s more grain management on exterior shots than initially anticipated / hoped, even for OCN shots. I haven’t followed the discussion about the film’s releases over the last couple of days as I’m currently caught up in a lot of work, so please forgive me if this isn’t news. It helps that Robby Müller shot large parts of the film on what was surely the slowest and most fine-grained stock at the time. Technically with that being the case, the temptation re. grain management should’ve been unlikely in general, yet Wenders and / or the restoration facility seemingly thought that a little touch up makes the film look that much newer.

Don’t get me wrong, large parts, if not the majority of this still gorgeous master look absolutely stunning like never before. It’s just traces of tinkering that are present and they’re so subtle that for cases like this I wish I wasn’t a pixel-pepper.

And I also love, love, love the color scheme. I’ve never had a chance to see the film theatrically, let alone from a print, so maybe I would’ve felt differently had that been the case, but right now, even after only seeing half an hour of this master, I’ve already fallen in love with this film again and can’t wait to see it again in full as soon as possible.

By the way, I’ve also just watched the on-disc interview with the colorist Philipp Orgassa who did the new grade and he mentioned that the goal always is to make sure to restore the film to how it looked on the night of the premiere. The grade took roughly a week and the colorist looked at older reference materials, including DVD master(s). Wenders was indeed present during the grade and they did a print film emulation digitally, which is emulating what was done in the past photochemically via printer lights. This process was the basis for his grade and from that onwards they fine-tuned the grade. The colorist then asked Wenders about the feeling of colors, atmosphere and they’ve been talking about things like that throughout the process. A lot of time was spent matching shots re. weather etc. and then to get the mood of the scenes right. Orgassa said that he actually didn’t have to change much since so much was initially set up by Robby Müller on set as he shot the film as perfect as possible since manipulating the image wasn’t to his / Wenders’ satisfaction at the time.

However, and this struck me as odd, during the interview, the editor of the interview video inserted a few clips from the negative scan when it was seemingly in a state before much or any restoration and grading. Crucially, the colors on the negative looked more like this old Telecine scan from Criterion in one shot - the early one where Travis walks in the desert. I’ll just leave that here as-is before discussions will surely happen again and the question about what was intended vs. what was captured and whether that is actually close to the intended finished product (not necessarily likely).

He also addressed optical shots and it was a challenge in trying to match them with the OCN shots while hoping that we wouldn’t notice that they’re from a different kind of quality. He also particularly talked about the long opening title sequence with credits and they found the original textless OCN plate for that shot, so they could recreate the titles digitally without having to use the optically printed one. But who on earth then applied DNR here??!!!! (Unfortunately the colorist didn’t mention if any searching was done re. the other opticals, which would’ve been interesting since the textless title sequence was found at the Wim Wenders Stiftung, so I’d say chances aren’t slim that they kept more at the time).

HDR is also a topic and PullBack Camera will love what the colorist said. Past monitors and masters could only capture a few stops of brightness and contrast whereas HDR can approximate much more of the color and light spectrum that’s on the negative, hence them doing the HDR to bring out the brightness and contrast better.

@Ryan: The Wenders interview from 2022 that’s on the disc runs 50 minute and he recorded two introductions, one in French (4 mins) and one in English for Curzon (3 mins).

[denti alligator]

Great to hear. So the encode is not the same as Criterion’s. Better?

[nicolas]

Great to hear. So the encode is not the same as Criterion’s. Better?

Yes, it’s definitely better. There’s a comparison on the other forum and Curzon’s encode looks the best to me on screenshots and in motion it’s excellent. Carlotta used LSP and they’re also excellent but they couldn’t avoid some blocking in darker spots. I’ll report back on how the German Arthaus / StudioCanal disc is.

Here’s the comparison: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=66

[ryannichols7]

@Ryan: The Wenders interview from 2022 that’s on the disc runs 50 minute and he recorded two introductions, one in French (4 mins) and one in English for Curzon (3 mins).

thank you, as always, for this totally amazing post. you just sold a copy of the Curzon once Orbit gets it back in stock. very glad they knocked this out of the park, their UHDs have seemed to be pretty fantastic lately (and I have a bit of a backlog on getting them). as with Seven Samurai I think it's totally acceptable to keep the Criterion BD (as I just praised up thread) for its incredible extras, while getting the UK UHD for the superior presentation + own unique extras. I love hearing Wenders speak in French funnily enough, so I find it charming they included that

[ianthemovie]

I hadn't realized that the Criterion 4K and the Blu-ray use different aspect ratios. What is the reason behind this decision, and is there a consensus as to whether it makes sense? Has it been discussed somewhere already?

[CSM126]

I hadn't realized that the Criterion 4K and the Blu-ray use different aspect ratios. What is the reason behind this decision, and is there a consensus as to whether it makes sense? Has it been discussed somewhere already?

The Blu is an old master. The 4K is a new master with the corrected ratio.

[swo17]

Great to hear. So the encode is not the same as Criterion’s. Better?

Yes, it’s definitely better. There’s a comparison on the other forum and Curzon’s encode looks the best to me on screenshots and in motion it’s excellent. Carlotta used LSP and they’re also excellent but they couldn’t avoid some blocking in darker spots. I’ll report back on how the German Arthaus / StudioCanal disc is.

Here’s the comparison: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=66

Where am I supposed to be seeing a difference between the three transfers?

[black&huge]

I bought the Criterion 4k, still unopened. Should I opt for the Curzon instead?

[nicolas]

I bought the Criterion 4k, still unopened. Should I opt for the Curzon instead?

Maybe even for the German StudioCanal one. I need to spend a bit more time comparing to declare the better one, but the overseas ones are definitely better than the Criterion. I’ll let you know when I can say more.

[nicolas]

Great to hear. So the encode is not the same as Criterion’s. Better?

Yes, it’s definitely better. There’s a comparison on the other forum and Curzon’s encode looks the best to me on screenshots and in motion it’s excellent. Carlotta used LSP and they’re also excellent but they couldn’t avoid some blocking in darker spots. I’ll report back on how the German Arthaus / StudioCanal disc is.

Here’s the comparison: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=66

Where am I supposed to be seeing a difference between the three transfers?

If you go on the slow.pics URL the user linked in his post. The transfers are identical, the differences are solely in the encoding. Of the three, the Curzon is best, then comes Carlotta and Criterion is worse overall.

[nicolas]

@Ryan: The Wenders interview from 2022 that’s on the disc runs 50 minute and he recorded two introductions, one in French (4 mins) and one in English for Curzon (3 mins).

thank you, as always, for this totally amazing post. you just sold a copy of the Curzon once Orbit gets it back in stock. very glad they knocked this out of the park, their UHDs have seemed to be pretty fantastic lately (and I have a bit of a backlog on getting them). as with Seven Samurai I think it's totally acceptable to keep the Criterion BD (as I just praised up thread) for its incredible extras, while getting the UK UHD for the superior presentation + own unique extras. I love hearing Wenders speak in French funnily enough, so I find it charming they included that

Thanks for the kind words I agree, Curzon are doing much better now than they did until a year ago. They’ve come a long way but seemingly the criticism they got on the forums was enough convincing them to do a complete overhaul of their technical workflow. The key decision they made was switching to a new authoring house, which is now paying off.

Just FYI, I’ll also take a look at the German 4K of the film which has yet another new encode and it’s interesting that this encode makes a couple of shots I found somewhat strange in the Curzon (where I mentioned grain management) look a bit better. The German UHD has yet another exclusive Wenders introduction, fittingly in German, alongside the French one and the English 50-minute interview. The interview with the colorist is exclusive to Curzon and the German 4K also doesn’t have a 2.0 audio mix.

Edit: Much ado about nothing. The Curzon is superior. What I thought I saw (variations in grain density within two shots at the same location and in the same scene) is present in the master and has nothing to do with the encode. One of the shots simply has less grain, which may be due to some gentle grain management or Robby Müller used a finer stock here compared to the reverse shot. The degrained OCN title card shot doesn’t look better on the Arthaus either.

Curzon remains the best

[swo17]

Yes, it’s definitely better. There’s a comparison on the other forum and Curzon’s encode looks the best to me on screenshots and in motion it’s excellent. Carlotta used LSP and they’re also excellent but they couldn’t avoid some blocking in darker spots. I’ll report back on how the German Arthaus / StudioCanal disc is.

Here’s the comparison: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=66

Where am I supposed to be seeing a difference between the three transfers?

If you go on the slow.pics URL the user linked in his post. The transfers are identical, the differences are solely in the encoding. Of the three, the Curzon is best, then comes Carlotta and Criterion is worse overall.

OK, where am I supposed to be seeing a difference between the three encodes? I mean, I can see that there are differences but it's not clear to me how any one is better than another

[domino harvey]

Do some of you buy gold HDMI cables too or

[nicolas]

Where am I supposed to be seeing a difference between the three transfers?

If you go on the slow.pics URL the user linked in his post. The transfers are identical, the differences are solely in the encoding. Of the three, the Curzon is best, then comes Carlotta and Criterion is worse overall.

OK, where am I supposed to be seeing a difference between the three encodes? I mean, I can see that there are differences but it's not clear to me how any one is better than another

I haven’t gone through all 50 screenshots but in this one here (https://slow.pics/c/cB7ojpqh), the wall behind Nastassja Kinski is better defined on the Curzon & Carlotta. Same to how the grain resolves better in the window (https://slow.pics/c/iVi3IAzC) and here in the clouds on the upper left (https://slow.pics/c/diXOdLW1).

[black&huge]

Welp. So long, goodbye Criterion 4k. Curzon's it!

[Walter Kurtz]

I haven’t gone through all 50 screenshots but in this one here (https://slow.pics/c/cB7ojpqh), the wall behind Nastassja Kinski is better defined on the Curzon & Carlotta. Same to how the grain resolves better in the window (https://slow.pics/c/iVi3IAzC) and here in the clouds on the upper left (https://slow.pics/c/diXOdLW1).

As far as I can tell this is just another version of SNL Nuni skits.

Nuni: It's Nooo-neee. Not Nooo-neee!
Guest: Nooo-neee?
Nuni: No! Nooo-neee. Nooo-neee.
Guest: Nooo-neee.
Nuni: NO!!! (gives up)

[tenia]

Well, Criterion's encode here isn't their My Own Private Idaho BD or their Walkabout UHD, that's for sure, but for those whose discerning goes up to checking the quality of encodes, yeah, that's what it's about here. I circled back and forth on nicolas' 3 examples, and without looking at which disc I was looking a screencap of, I each time identified Criterion's lower encode thanks for the wall, the window and the clouds (especially the window).
But again, the Criterion encode doesn't look so bad here, but it is inferior to the other ones, and if you can't spot it, then all the best to you, because you most likely won't be bothered by it.