Faux mouvement

Many people spring to life when expressing their contempt for Wim Wenders' films, pushing themselves toward new heights of eloquence...and for that reason I usually keep my admiration for him to myself but this movie and the Goalie's Anxiety (not the easiest film to watch) really hit the nail on the head. Incredible portraits of people (in this case men) who have itches that they just can't scratch! In one scene the "hero" listens to the ex-Nazi make some crack about Jesse Owens getting the gold medal and he says,"..so you wouldn't have stood on the platform next to a black man?" and I thought, "I would give anything to see an American movie with a conversation as half as real as this!" You think Wenders is boring? Ok, fine, he's boring. But American movies are phony, like Mcdonald's french fries, they're treated with formaldahyde to maintain their "natural" color.

"Falsche Bewegung," (In the US called "The Wrong Move") is one of the finest films ever produced in Germany and certainly of of film guru Wim Wender's best works. An analysis of the sentiments, both serious and humorous, of the citizens of Post-war Germany, the feelings of guilt, loss, anger, and misdirection is so clearly and frighteningly distributed to the audience it really brings you to thought and to tears. A masterpiece.

This early Wim Wenders film is about a frustrated writer who is encouraged by his mother to take a train trip to Bonn. On the way he meets an odd assortment of characters including a former concentration camp guard who is now a street musician, a mute teenage acrobat, a semi-famous actress, a hilarious overweight would-be poet, and the latter's "uncle", a depressed suicidal recluse. The film is rather talky and philosophical, frequently meditating on the nature of artistic creation itself. It has kind of morose atmosphere to it like Wender's later film "Paris, Texas", but without the redemptive ending. For lack of a better word I would call it existentialist. Like "Paris, Texas" it's kind of an existentialist road movie except that the characters travel by train.

The only recognizable actor in this is a young Nastassia Kinski. This isn't nearly as sexy as one of her late 70's/early 80's roles (but like "To the Devil a Daughter" a year later, it's probably sexier than it ought to be). Still, whereas most male directors at the time were mostly interested in undressing Kinski (both on and off screen), Wenders can be credited at least with making her a more respected actress, mostly with her later role in "Paris, Texas", but also to a lesser extent with her debut role in this.

I can see why people find this kind of slow-going and perhaps a little depressing. But I found it quite interesting and actually enjoyed it.

Wrong Move wasn't engaing enough for me to actually care about 4 people traveling, talking and wanting to kill each other. The cinematography is the only great thing that stands out, everything else doesn't really hold up well.

Time does not always work in favor of movies. The second film I saw in Wim Wenders' retrospective at the local cinematheque was' Wrong Move' (the original title in German is' Falsche Bewegung'), which belongs to the cycle of three 'road movies' created by the director at the beginning of his career in the 1970s. It's one of those cases where as a film lover you can recognize many of the cultural ideas and landmarks on which the film is based and you can identify signs of the director's subsequent evolution. However, there is a lack of vibration and even of a great deal of interest, since the problems of post-war Germany are largely out of date and the style of dialogues combining existentialism with Goethe's writing experiences does not resonate in any way for the viewers of today.

Those who read Goethe know that Wilhelm Meister is the hero one of his novels in which the hero, a young writer in the making, crosses the future of Germany from north to south on a journey of intellectual initiation and self-discovery, trying to find the literary and emotional resources necessary for his profession. The action is shifted to the Germany of the 1970s when young Wilhelm Meister receives as a present a similar journey from his mother. He gets on his way and meets some bizarre and especially alienated characters typical of a society that had not completely exited the post-war trauma. The accumulation of information and emotion is rendered in the film through a combination of slow action, dialogues that are actually more monologues, and off-screen text probably extracted from Goethe's book. It is a combination that may have worked and may have been really interesting in the movies of the '60s or '70s (used intensely by Antonioni for example) but which in this film has a dormant effect.

Yet, there are a few good reasons why this film deserves to be seen. First of all for the two formidable actresses that appear in the cast. For Nastassja Kinski , still at teenage age and before getting the name under which she became famous, it was the debut film. For Hanna Schygulla, at the peak of her beauty, it was probably the first important role. Both play splendidly in roles that fit them perfectly. The problem is that each of the actors seems to play their roles separately. There is a story in the film that includes an ambiguous romantic triangle, but it lacks any vibration, perhaps because of the wooden acting of the actor in the lead role (Rüdiger Vogler). The existentialist type of the characters has real motives in the history of Germany at that time, but for today's spectators, especially if they are not familiar with that history, their behavior is difficult to understand. The feeling of verbosity at certain moments is accentuated by the slow pace of action in the intermediate scenes. In the absence of many obsolete cultural and historical landmarks, 'Wrong Move' does not say much to the contemporary film viewers.