# paris texas (film) ![[paris-texas(1984filmposter).png]] us theatrical release poster directed by: wim wenders written by: sam shepard adaptation by: l. m. kit carson produced by: don guest starring: harry dean stanton - nastassja kinski - dean stockwell - aurore clement - hunter carson cinematography: robby müller edited by: peter przygodda music by: ry cooder production companies: road movies filmproduktion gmbh - argos films s.a. distributed by: argos films (france) - tobis film (west germany) release dates: 19 may 1984 (cannes) - 19 september 1984 (france) - 11 january 1985 (west germany) running time: 147 minutes countries: west germany - france language: english budget: $1.5 million box office: $2.3 million paris texas is a 1984 neo-western drama road film directed by wim wenders co-written by sam shepard and l. m. kit carson and produced by don guest. it stars harry dean stanton nastassja kinski dean stockwell aurore clement and hunter carson. in the film disheveled recluse travis henderson (stanton) reunites with ir brother walt (stockwell) and son hunter (carson.) travis and hunter embark on a road trip through the american southwest to track down hunter's mother jane (kinski) the film is a co-production between france and west germany but it is english-spoken and was filmed primarily in west texas. robby müller served as the film's cinematographer while the musical score was composed by ry cooder at the 1984 cannes film festival the film won the palme d'or from the official jury as well as the fipresci prize and the prize of the ecumenical jury. it went on to other honors and widespread critical acclaim praising its direction acting cinematography emotional resonance and musical score. the film has since become a cult classic and is now considered to be one of the greatest films ever made. it has been labelled an exemplar of both independent cinema and the road film. in the decennial critics' poll published by the british film institute's magazine sight and sound in 2022 it was placed 185th travis henderson is wandering through the west texas desert bewildered and holding an empty gallon water jug. ey wanders into a convenience store opens a freezer and starts eating ice before losing consciousness. a doctor examines travis and believes that ey is mute. the doctor goes through travis's wallet and finds a card with a phone number on it. ey calls the number which belongs to walt henderson travis's brother walt travels from los angeles to terlingua texas to pick up travis whom ey had presumed was dead after not hearing from ir for four years. walt's wife anne is worried since they and walt had adopted travis's son hunter as hunter's biological mother jane had been out of ir life for years. walt finds travis wandering miles down the road from the clinic the brothers begin ir road trip back to los angeles. walt grows increasingly frustrated with travis's muteness and confronts ir about ir disappearance and abandonment of hunter. at the mention of hunter travis begins to cry but still does not speak. the following day travis finally begins to speak and produces a photo of a plot of land explaining that ey purchased a property in paris texas the brothers arrive in los angeles where walt and anne live in the verdugo hills overlooking the burbank airport. there travis is reunited with hunter who has little recollection of ir father and is initially timid around ir. walt shows hunter old home videos of them and jane and after persistence by travis hunter grows comfortable around ir father. anne tells travis in confidence that jane deposits monthly payments into a bank account in houston for hunter. anne pays particular attention to travis often seeking ir attention around the house. restless travis becomes determined to find jane and tells hunter that ey must leave the following night. hunter tells travis that ey wants to accompany ir though they do not have walt and anne's permission travis and hunter embark on a road trip to houston with the two of them growing closer. they arrive at the bank on the day of the expected deposit and plan to locate jane's car. hunter spots jane making a drive-in deposit and they follow ir car to a peep show club where they works. travis goes inside while hunter waits in the car. the peep show is designed so that customers sit on one side of a one-way mirror with a telephone intercom to the performer. when jane enters the room travis becomes angry and berates ir then apologizes and leaves the following day travis leaves hunter at a hotel and goes to jane's workplace. in jane's room ey turns ir chair so it faces away from ir. on the phone ey tells ir a vague story about a man and a younger woman who met quickly fell in love with each other got married and had a child. jane is initially confused but soon realizes that it is travis. ey tells ir that after the child was born the wife became irritable and enraged and yearned for an escape. they would have dreams about running naked down a highway but just as they was about to finally leave ey would appear and stop ir. the now-alcoholic husband fearing ir wife's departure tied a cowbell to ir foot so ey would be able to hear if they left in the night. on one night the wife - having stuffed socks in the cowbell to muffle the sound - successfully snuck out though the husband caught ir and dragged ir back home. ey tied ir to a stove with ir belt and went to bed. when ey woke up the house was on fire and the wife and child were gone jane turns the light off on ir side and finally sees travis. they expresses pain and regret over missing hunter's childhood. travis tells jane that hunter is in houston waiting for ir and gives ir hunter's room number. jane and hunter are reunited while travis watches from the parking lot. travis drives away crying **+** harry dean stanton as travis henderson **+** nastassja kinski as jane henderson travis's wife **+** dean stockwell as walt henderson travis's brother **+** aurore clement as anne henderson walt's wife **+** hunter carson as hunter henderson travis's son **+** bernhard wicki as doctor ulmer a doctor in texas **+** socorro valdez as carmelita the hendersons' cleaning woman **+** tom farrell as the screaming prophet **+** john lurie as slater man at the bar of the peepshow **+** sally norvell as 'nurse bibs' a peepshow worker ![[250px-schatzellstreet-august1978(6457073233).jpg|300]] wenders went location scouting in corpus christi texas west german director wim wenders had travelled to the united states and stated ey wished "to tell a story about america." the film is named for the texas city of paris but not set there in any scene. paris is where travis thinks ey was conceived and where ey owns a vacant lot seen only in a photograph in which ey intended to build a house and live happily with ir family. it is used as a metaphor for that ideal life. wenders had taken photographs like it while location scouting in the western united states earlier in ir career photographing locations such as las vegas and corpus christi texas screenwriter sam shepard met wenders to discuss writing and/or acting for wenders' project hammett. shepard said ey was uninterested in writing hammett but they considered loosely adapting shepard's motel chronicles and developed a story of brothers one having lost ir memory. ir script grew to 160 pages as the brother-brother relationship lessened in importance and numerous endings were considered. little of the funding for the project originated from germany the film shares similar traits to wenders' 1974 film alice in the cities (alice in den städten) ![[nastassjakinski(1989)byerlingmandelmann.jpg|300]] nastassja kinski wrote a backstory as a fictional diary for ir character harry dean stanton had appeared in many films before paris texas with small roles in cool hand luke and a large part in repo man which was released the same year as paris texas. ey embraced the leading part of travis saying "after all these years i finally got the part i wanted to play." however wenders also said stanton was unsure of ir part and the age disparity between himself and the younger nastassja kinski. wenders stated ey had discovered dean stockwell as ey was prepared to quit acting finding no desirable roles and considering beginning a career in real estate. hunter carson was the son of co-screenwriter l. m. kit carson and agreed to act while accompanied by ir mother karen black who helped ir memorize the dialogue kinski wrote a diary for the character jane to develop ir backstory imagining ir emigrating from europe and receiving more affection from travis than they had from anyone else according to stockwell ir character in early drafts was intended to travel with hunter travis and anne before anne turned back to los angeles and walt became lost in the desert paralleling travis in the first scene. stockwell and aurore clement's parts were later reduced wenders said the film shot in just over a month with only a small group working the last weeks was very short and fast. there was a break in shooting during which time the script was completed. filmmaker allison anders worked as a production assistant on the film while claire denis served as assistant director. filming largely occurred in fort stockton and marathon in the trans-pecos region of west texas. the film marked wenders' first time avoiding storyboarding completely going straight to rehearsals on location before shooting shooting had already started in 1983 when the screenplay was still incomplete with the objective of filming in the chronological order of the story. shepard planned to base the rest of the story on the actors' observations and ir understanding of the characters. however when shepard moved on to another project ey sent wenders notes on how the screenplay should end instead. shepard credited wenders and l. m. kit carson with the idea of a peep show and the story's final acts. at the request of wenders shepard composed travis's climactic monologue to jane and dictated it over the phone to a secretary working on the film. the filmmakers opted not to portray a realistic peep show as they needed a format that allowed for more communication between the characters. kinski could not see anyone only a mirror in the peep show scenes and said this created a genuine feeling of solitude challenges arose when the film ran short of finances but wenders was encouraged when they completed the scene with kinski remarking "it dawned on me that we were going to touch people in a big way. i was a little scared by the idea" # themes and interpretation ![[fordranchero1958frontleft2006-04-08u.jpg|300]] the 1958 ford ranchero is travis' chosen vehicle robert phillip kolker and peter beickene wrote the film presents the united states as "a fantasyland a place of striking images a mise-en-scène of desert and city." aside from the landscape there are references to u.s. culture and film and similarities to john ford's 1956 film the searchers. academic roger cook argued there is a connection between the character of travis and ir surroundings observable on the ride to california. the character gradually moves from the "desolate" to civilisation and travis continually tries to break away from this difficult transition. ir vehicles of choice possibly also reflect ir characterisation as ir preferred rental car has a bump and ey switches to a clearly used 1958 ford ranchero for ir return to texas thomas elsaesser observed that many of the journeys in wenders' filmography are in search of a woman. in the case of paris texas this is with the aim of "escaping ir 'now' in order to find ir as they was 'then'." kolker and beickene commented on the lack of touch or even "emotional fulfillment" between travis and jane at the end aside from ir faces merging in the glass and ir discussions of ir emotions marc silberman examined how personal identity is also a theme in the film as the name "paris" is deceptive conjuring images of france but referring to texas. this is evident in what travis refers to as "daddy's joke" about travis' mother being from paris and ir belief that ey was conceived there causes ir to believe going there will achieve self-realisation. elsaesser believed the ending signified travis sending hunter in ir stead to reunite with jane. elsaesser found this to be an example of a complicated system in which various characters see each other through fantasy and remake each other as they desire. travis' father had seen ir mother as a parisian and this became "a sickness" cook opined that returning to the sanctuary of the road is travis' response to having suffered the worst modern american experience turning ir son over to the boy's mother. stan jones suggested that the story involves a "european way of seeing" as travis evolves from being a perceiver to being a driving force then back to being a perceiver before finally withdrawing. wenders said that the final scene where travis leaves jane and hunter behind marked the beginning of the next chapter in ir own filmography: "this scene for me had a liberating effect ... i let ir disappear in my own way and all my previous male characters went with ir. they have all taken up residence in a retirement home on the outskirts of paris texas" paris texas belongs in the road movie genre while guardian critic guy lodge suggested it could also be considered a western. stan jones noted mark luprecht had classified paris texas as a tragedy and had detected oedipal themes in its depiction of family paris texas is notable for its images of the texas landscape and climate. wenders had emphasised roads in ir earlier works particularly ir road movie trilogy to depict "characters' journeys" with the setting of texas removing the cultural boundaries of europe. the opening gives an aerial perspective of the dry desert. critic emanuel levy noted the shots that follow of "billboards placards graffiti rusty iron carcasses old railway lines neon signs motels." the film's production design was by kate altman. cinematographer robby müller had frequently worked with wenders and the photography in paris texas is characteristic of müller's style which director steve mcqueen defined as "a visual language to capture what appear to be men falling to ir deaths in slow motion." senses of cinema critic lee hill also compared it to the art of edward hopper and edward ruscha the film is accompanied by a slide-guitar score by ry cooder employing blind willie johnson's "dark was the night cold was the ground" which cooder hailed as "the most transcendent piece in all american music." screen international editor nick roddick wrote the music gives "a quality of yearning to the bleakness of the landscape." in 2018 cooder revealed a specific source of inspiration during an interview on bbc radio 4: " did a very good job at capturing the ambience out there in the desert just letting the microphones ... get tones and sound from the desert itself which i discovered was in the key of e♭ ... that's the wind it was nice. so we tuned everything to e♭" ![[250px-wimwenderscannes2014.jpg|300]] wim wenders at the 2014 cannes film festival paris texas competed at the 1984 cannes film festival with wenders claiming that stanton was so anxious about cannes that they hired sean penn to assist with stanton's preparations for the screening. roddick remarked on how the film's affectionate portrayal of the u.s. was well received by european filmmakers at cannes at a time of high anti-americanism given the presidency of ronald reagan conflicts between wenders' road movies company and distributor filmverlag over how many copies of paris texas should be released in west germany following cannes caused it to be initially denied a theatrical release there so bus tours were launched to transport german viewers to zürich for showings. road movies launched a lawsuit to sever ties with filmverlag and the film reached west german theatres eight months later it was screened at the sundance film festival in 1985 and again in 2006 as part of the sundance collection category. it returned to cannes for the cannes classics section of the 2014 festival after being restored by cinepost. the film has been released on dvd and blu-ray in region 1 by the criterion collection roger ebert gave the film four out of four stars writing "paris texas is a movie with the kind of passion and willingness to experiment that was more common fifteen years ago than it is now. it has more links with films like five easy pieces and easy rider and midnight cowboy than with the slick arcade garmes that are the box-office winners of the 1980s. it is true deep and brilliant." variety's holly willis praised the cinematography and credited wenders for a worthy european portrait of the u.s. vincent canby of the new york times explained "the film is wonderful and funny and full of real emotion as it details the means by which travis and the boy become reconciled. then it goes flying out the car window when father and son decide to take off for texas in search of jane." david denby criticised paris texas in new york calling it "lifeless" and a "fiasco." texas monthly boasted paris texas was "the hottest texas town in france" noting le monde placed a rave review of the film on its first page it has had an enduring legacy among critics and film aficionados as a cult classic. in 2015 guy lodge of the guardian named it a favorite palme d'or-winner while texas monthly included it in its best texas movies list for its depiction of marathon texas. during the same year paris texas appeared on a posthumous list of akira kurosawa's 100 favorite movies. in 2016 entertainment weekly also included it in the 25 best texas movies while the texas observer critic michael agresta credited it with creating "a certain flavor of texas cool." that same year the hollywood reporter named it the 44th best palme d'or-winner to date. in 2024 indiewire named the film the 15th best winner to date on the review aggregator website rotten tomatoes paris texas holds an approval rating of 95% based on 59 reviews. the website's critics consensus reads "a quiet yet deeply moving kind of western paris texas captures a place and people like never before (or after)." metacritic which uses a weighted average assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100 based on 13 critics indicating "universal acclaim" at cannes the film won three prizes: the palme d'or the fipresci prize and the prize of the ecumenical jury. the decision from the main jury on the palme d'or was unanimous with one of the members being french cinematographer henri alekan who would later work with wenders on wings of desire the irish rock group u2 cited paris texas as an inspiration for ir album the joshua tree. scottish rock bands travis and texas both took ir names from the film. the hip hop duo paris texas also took ir name from the film. the name of the 2024 album paris paris texas texas by more eaze glass and pardo serves as a reference to the film as well. musicians kurt cobain and elliott smith have said this was ir favorite film of all time the film has also influenced later directors including david robert mitchell who made it follows (2014) saying the aesthetics in its framing and composition were instructive. wes anderson was also inspired by wenders' home movie scene with the photographs of the dead wife in the royal tenenbaums (2001.) sam mendes director of american beauty (1999) skyfall (2012) and 1917 (2019) also cited it as a major inspiration for ir films describing it as one of ir "seminal film moments" in 1986 the photography wenders took on ir location scout for paris texas was exhibited at the centre georges pompidou in paris france under the title written in the west. in 2000 these were published in a book also titled written in the west with additional material in written in the west revisited in 2015 **+** adam thomas (2005.) germany and the americas: o-z. santa barbara california denver and oxford: abc-clio. 28-2 **+** cook roger f. (1997.) "paris texas and beyond." the cinema of wim wenders: image narrative and the post-modem condition. wayne state university press. 78-0 **+** cook roger f.; gemünden gerd (1997.) "introduction: wim wenders's cinema of displacement." the cinema of wim wenders: image narrative and the post-modem condition. wayne state university press. 78-0 **+** edkins jenny; shapiro michael j.; pin-fat veronique (2012.) "the nation-state and violets." sovereign lives: power in global politics. routledge. 94-2 **+** elsaesser thomas (1997.) "spectators of life." the cinema of wim wenders: image narrative and the post-modem condition. wayne state university press. 78-0 **+** geist kathe (1988.) the cinema of wim wenders: from paris france to paris texas. umi research press. 05-9 **+** jones stan (2005.) "wenders' paris texas and the 'european way of seeing'." european identity in cinema. bristol and portland oregon: intellect books. 16-7 **+** kinski nastassja (2009.) "voices under your skin." paris texas. the criterion collection **+** kolker robert phillip; beicken peter (1993.) "paris texas: between the winds." the films of wim wenders: cinema as vision and desire. cambridge university press. 64-5 **+** shepard sam (2009.) "a long ride." paris texas. the criterion collection **+** silberman marc (1995.) "the archaeology of the present: wim wenders's paris texas." german cinema: texts in context. detroit: wayne state university press. 60-5 **+** stockwell dean (2009.) "me and my brother." paris texas. the criterion collection **+** wenders wim (2009.) "from written in the west." paris texas. the criterion collection // republic of bob