Cinema
Paris, Texas
Wim Wenders · 1984
Synopsis
A haggard man, Travis, emerges from the desert of west Texas and collapses while looking for water; he does not say a word. His brother Walt, who thought him dead after four years without news, comes to fetch him and drives him back to Los Angeles. There lives Hunter, Travis's son, raised by Walt and his wife Anne, who barely remembers his father. Learning that the child's mother, Jane, sends money every month from a bank in Houston, Travis sets off with Hunter to find her.
Context
The filmmaker wanted to tell a story about America; he built the story with the playwright Sam Shepard, starting at first from the latter's Motel Chronicles, and L. M. Kit Carson took part in the screenplay. Co-produced by West Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the film was shot from 29 September to 11 December 1983, mostly at Fort Stockton and Marathon; the screenplay, unfinished at the start of shooting, was completed during an interruption. Ry Cooder composed the music on slide guitar, from a piece by Blind Willie Johnson. In Germany, a conflict with the distributor delayed the release until January 1985.
Who it is for
A film in English, shot on the roads of Texas, with Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and the young Hunter Carson.
Prizes and reception
Palme d'Or, International Critics' Prize and Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cannes in 1984; more than a million viewers in West Germany in 1985.