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> Paris, Texas |
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Staring:
Harry Dean Stanton,
Nastassja Kinski,
Dean Stockwell,
Sam Berry,
Bernhard Wicki
Director:
Wim Wenders
Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 5060020620706
Format: PAL
Number Of Discs: 1
Region Code: 2
Running Time: 139
Theatrical Release Date: 1984-11-09 |
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Product Description
Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Spanish ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), Spanish ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN, SPECIAL FEATURES: Biographies, Collectors Edition, Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Documentary, Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) is wandering through the Texas desert, a bit shaky and in desperate need of water, when he stumbles into a bar and collapses. A German doctor of dubious credentials finds a phone number in Travis' wallet, which belongs to his brother, Walt ( Dean Stockwell). Walt is shocked to hear about his brother's condition, since no one in the family has seen or heard from Travis in four years; Walt flies to Texas to bring him home, only to find Travis wandering by the side of the road, and they begin the long drive back to Los Angeles, where Walt lives with his wife, Anne (Aurore Clement), and Hunter (Hunter Carson), Travis' seven-year-old son. At first, Travis refuses to speak and is oddly distant, but in time he begins to talk again, and when he arrives in California, he begins the painful process of reacquainting himself with his son and trying to reconcile with his wife, Jane (Nastassia Kinski).
SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, Cannes Film Festival, Ceasar Awards, David Donatello Awards, Golden Globes,
Amazon.com
Something like a perfect artistic union is achieved in the major components of Paris, Texas: the twang of Ry Cooder's guitar, the lonely light of Robbie Muller's camera, the craggy landscape of Harry Dean Stanton's face. In his greatest role, longtime character actor Stanton plays a man brought back to his old life after wandering in the desert (or somewhere) for four years. He has a 7-year-old son to get to know, and his wife has gone missing. The material is much in the wanderlust spirit of director Wim Wenders, working from a script by Sam Shepard and L.M. Kit Carson. If the long climactic conversation between Stanton and Nastassja Kinski renders the movie uneven and slightly inscrutable, it's hard to think of a more fitting ending--and besides, the achingly empty American spaces stick longer in the memory than the dialogue. Winner of the top prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. --Robert Horton
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The slow process of healing...., 2010-04-12
"Paris, Texas"(1984) is directed by Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire). Even though Wim Wenders directed 12 feature films before this one he said that this was his second film since it took all of his previous films for him to be able to make this one. Sam Shepard and Kit Carson wrote the screenplay, and Ry Cooder supplied the wonderfully melancholic slide guitar music. The film begins with Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton) wandering apparently aimlessly in the Southwestern desert of the U.S. Initially he seems to have amnesia, and we discover later that he has been in incognito for four years. Gradually he emerges from his psychological retreat from the world with the help of his brother who has been taking care of his son. This is a film that slowly unfolds its secrets as Travis continues a healing process which began when he first ran out into the desert, running away from civilization and his old life. The story comes full circle when Travis finds his missing wife, Jane (Nastassja Kinski), and we learn the full story about what led to Travis' escape from the world. This film won't be to everyone's taste who is used to the fast pace of the city, as this movie at times is as slowly relentless, and harsh as the parched desert itself, its landscape the bare bones of a man who has come face to face with his dark side and hasn't liked what he saw.
This blu-ray is remastered with DTS-HD Master Audio, and has a large number of special features, including interviews with Wim Wenders, Ry Cooder, Dean Stanton, Peter Falk, Dennis Hopper, Hanns Zishler, Patricia Highsmith, Claire Dennis, Allison Anders, and Samuel Fuller. There is also "Wim Wenders Hollywood April '84", which is a French television segment featuring Wenders and Cooder at work on the score. There are also deleted scenes and a booklet featuring interviews with Stanton, Sam Shepard, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, as well as an essay by film critic Nick Roddick.
A Film of Haunting Beauty, 2010-04-23
Occasionally, a film comes along that, in its simplicity, captures the character of a landscape as well as the people in it. Such a movie is "Paris, Texas," German director Wim Wenders' second American film. His first, "Hammett" (1982), was re-edited by its producer to make it more commercial. Two years later, Wenders returned to America with European financing and full artistic freedom, and created "Paris, Texas," a road movie of great visual beauty that works on several levels.
The story focuses on Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton). Our first image of the character is a distant shot of him emerging from the Southwestern desert, a scene reminiscent of Omar Sharif on camel in "Lawrence of Arabia" slowly approaching the camera as heat rising from the desert sands gives the scene a mirage-like effect. Travis wanders into a small Texas town and collapses from exhaustion. The local doctor contacts Travis' brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) who, with his wife, has been raising Travis' son, Hunter. Travis goes back to Walt's home in Los Angeles, but remains distant. Uncomfortable with life in the suburbs, he decides to take his son and go back to Texas to find his former wife and Hunter's mother, Jane (Nastassja Kinski).
The movie is technically a road picture, but also explores themes of redemption and restlessness while couching itself in mystery. We're told that Travis has been lost for five years, but are never clued in as to where he's been. This gives a mythic aura to the character. Man on a quest -- a modern day Don Quixote not jousting at windmills but lost in the metaphoric desert.
This is the only movie in which Stanton was the star. He's made quite a career as character actor, but this is his best role. His rugged face suggests a man who's experienced a hard, unhappy life, and his reticence suggests a Gary Cooper-like Everyman.
Wenders lets his images resonate with the viewer rather than editing quickly. He establishes a slow pace that allows us to see what Travis and the other characters are thinking. This is not a movie overstuffed with dialogue. The locations -- flat sun-drenched, wide-open -- capture the beauty of the Southwest.
With evocative cinematography by Robby Muller and music by Ry Cooder, "Paris, Texas" is a beautiful looking film with a distinctly American feel.
The Criterion Blu-ray edition contains audio commentary by Wim Wenders; "The Road to Paris, Texas," a 43-minute making-of documentary; deleted scenes; and a featurette containing reminiscences by Claire Denis and Allison Anders, the film's first assistant director and production assistant, respectively.
Beautiful Blu-ray of Wenders' Dark Classic, 2010-02-18
Criterion's Blu-ray transfer is magnificent. The image is very natural, with great depth - I viewed this via a 1080p projector, and the transfer was as film-like as could be hoped for. The soundtrack is as impressive - with Ry Cooder's music being so integral to the heart of the film, this improvement over DVD is very welcome.
I remember first viewing this at the cinema in the 80s. To be honest, I found it a bit greulling. At that time I hadn't seen much in the way of European cinema, and the American setting and actors had me expecting a film with not just a different pace but a different emotional world.
Now I find 'Paris, Texas' makes me think of a strange mix of other films.
Firstly, classic Westerns; most notably, 'The Searchers' - primarily for the mood evoked by the vast expanse of landscape, but also for the ultimately unfathomable motivations of the characters - however much you learn about Travis (or Ethan Edwards) the story behind their actions remains incomplete.
Terrence Malick's 'Days of Heaven' also comes to mind - again there is ravishing cinematography, and the overwhelming sense of immense space; there is also the direct connection with Sam Shepherd writing for Wenders and acting for Malick; the characters too share a terrifying vision of love, a vision that seems embodied in their physical surroundings - the superficial beauty is tied to an emotional emptiness, a kind of directionlessness, where ordinary morality is limited in its powers. It's as if both films speak of a freedom, intoxicating and full of promise, but which is also frightening, in that anything is possible and everything feels insecure.
More distant allusions reach to the 'existentialist' American road movies of the late 60s and early 70s, such as 'Vanishing Point' and 'Two-Lane Blacktop'. Where are all these men going? The image of the driver staring out at the world, on an inescapable journey, towards something unknowable (at the most obvious level, towards death), and away from his past - all these films share this perspective.
Ry Cooder's music envelopes the film, augmenting mood, and somehow heightening the importance of any particular image - as an aside, Ry Cooder recorded the entire score in little over a day! The music's role reminds me of Jim Jarmusch's 'Dead Man' - Neil Young's guitar likewise permeates the bones of that film.
Wenders' own European background also suggests links to German cinema of the 70s, notably his own works, but also those of Herzog and Fassbinder. The emotional pathology of the protagonists is starkly reminiscent of the narcissism, dissociation, and quasi-psychotic states of various characters inhabiting Fassbinder's prolific career, and there is a gentler association with Bruno S., especially in 'Stroszek' (once again set in America) - Travis reveals a dislocated child-like aspect to his character, touchingly played out through his contact with his son, Hunter. The pieces of his character are not coherent, however - his chaotic inner life is glimpsed literally through windows or through telephone wires, and along with child-like sympathy, there is rage, envy, jealousy, and despair. These emotions are impossible to bear, and so they are beaten down, his face scored but impassive. His efforts at denial detach him from reality, and Wenders' film charts his brief, and inwardly conflicted and complicated, return to the world shared by others.
The other characters in 'Paris,Texas' also live at one remove from reality. The depressing darkened world of Jane, Nastassja Kinski, is a literal as well as a metaphoric house of fantasies - one wonders if David Lynch was watching. Travis's brother Walt, Dean Stockwell, and his wife Anne, Aurore Clement, also maintain a problematic relationship with the world, despite a superficial normalcy - their stories are only hinted at, yet there is an element of fantasy in their adoption of Hunter as "their own" child, and Anne in particular is worried that losing Hunter will see their relationship, or in her words their "world", collapse.
Unsurprisingly, what I've mentioned goes nowhere near exhausting ideas inspired by the film. It is long, and the narrative is simple - but this is not what makes watching the film a demanding and taxing experience. The emotional foundation of the film is very disturbing - there is pain, and fear, and a real sense of people being broken. This is not meant to be merely a pleasant entertainment. It is harrowing, and it is a meditation not a diversion. The fragility of the human experience is here - in the faces, the images, the words, and most poignantly in Ry Cooder's haunted music.
 another great film from Wim Wenders, 2010-04-27
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
"Paris, Texas" is a film about a man named Travis who reemerges after having disappeared years earlier. Having possibly had amnesia, he later reconnects with his past.
The scene where Travis and his wife meet again is very emotional in my opinion the most memorable scene in the film.
The DVD edition has two discs with the film and director's commentary on disc one.
Disc two contains an interview with Wenders by Roger Willemsen, a 1990 documentary about Wim Wenders, Interviews with Allison Anders and Claire Denis, 1984 French television special about the film and Wenders, a Theatrical trailer, Deleted scenes, home movies with the cast and crew, location scouting photos, and other behind the scenes photos.
This is the best fully English language film by Wenders I have seen to date and hope to see Criterion release more.
A Remarkable and Powerful Film, 2010-07-17
I had been aware of this film for a number of years, but had always failed to watch it. I recently checked it out of my local library and the DVD sat on top of my TV for days until I finally took the time to watch it. To be honest, I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about until toward the end of the movie; it really carries an emotional punch with it. This is not a snapshot of the beautiful America that most foreigners have of our country. There are few manicured lawns and towering mansions in this film. The characters do not lead glamourous lives; you will never see them on the covers of magazines in the check-out lines in the supermarket. But it took a German filmmaker to create a visually stunning portrait of a side of America that few people ever really see, especially in the usual films that you rent at your local video store. There is so much sadness, regret, pain and utter desolation in this film and it's oftentimes reflected in the vast landscape of the American Southwest. Do yourself a favor today and watch this film. Its characters and story and music will stay with you long after you watch the ending credits!
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