#815: WENDERS, Wim: Wrong Move (1975)

WIM WENDERS: THE ROAD TRILOGY {Spine #813}

WENDERS, Wim (Germany)

Wrong Move [1975]

Spine #815
Blu-ray

With depth and style, Wim Wenders updates a late-eighteenth-century novel by Goethe, transposing it to 1970s West Germany and giving us the story of an aimless writer (Rüdiger Vogler) who leaves his hometown to find himself and winds up befriending a group of other travelers. Seeking inspiration to help him escape his creative funk, he instead discovers the limits of attempts to refashion one's identity. One of the director's least seen but earthiest and most devastating soul searches, Wrong Move features standout supporting performances from New German Cinema regulars Hanna Schygulla and Peter Kern and, in her first film appearance, Nastassja Kinski.

104 minutes
Color

5.1 Surround

in German

1:66:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2016

Director/Writer

Screenplay (based on Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship) by Peter Handke and Wim Wenders.

Wenders was 30 when he directed Wrong Move.

Other Wenders films in the Collection:

#814: Alice In The Cities (1974)
#816: Kings Of The Road (1976)
#793: The American Friend (1977)
#501: Paris, Texas (1984)
#490: Wings Of Desire (1987)
#1007: Until The End Of The World (1991)
#866: Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
#644: Pina (2011)
#1226: Perfect Days (2023)

The Book

Read the Goethe here.

Reading the book on the Internet Archive took several days of continuous reading and seemed to be over 1,000 pages.

This Bildungsroman is a work of enormous characterization and introspection. The main character — Wilhelm Meister — is in search of some great truth he never seems to internalize.

Many pages are devoted to his introduction to Shakespeare, followed by his deep study of the play, Hamlet. His work with a hardscrabble troupe of amateur, yet fairly well-versed, actors is told in great detail by Goethe. He seems consumed with producing the entire play, yet his manager insists on a distillation.

Wilhelm eventually gives up acting; is consumed with various relationships with various women (it can become quite confusing) — and ultimately falls in with a Christian sect, whose secrets seem to promise him some new, wonderful adventure. His son — issued from a relationship many pages earlier — is left to be educated by these strange people — and by the end of the novel, after much traveling, he rejoins him and with a poetic flourish, Goethe leaves him in a state of mild happiness, if not some kind of settled-for contentment.

It is a fantastic read, highly recommended.

The Film

As noted above, the screenplay is credited to Handke and Wenders with a parenthetical note: “based on Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.

It is the word “based” that is hard to swallow after watching the film; perhaps “loosely adapted from” or “influenced by” would be more appropriate.

The novel — which has literally dozens of important characters — is torn to shreds and Wenders uses only four characters from the book in his film. These are Wilhelm (a marvelously detached Rüdiger Vogler), Mignon (a dazzling 13-year-old Nastassja Kinski (or as she is credited, Nastassja Nakszynski — in her very first film role), and a combination of two different characters The Harper and Laertes — here played by Hans Christian Blech; a character who plays a harmonica (harp) in the film. In the novel The Harper carries around a portable harp, on which he plays dreary and mysterious songs. Laertes is an entirely different person in the book.

The fourth is Therese (the great Hanna Schygulla, who worked a lot with Fassbinder), even more withdrawn and introspective than in the novel.

The film is like a travelogue of Germany, beginning in Glückstadt (“good-luck city”) in the north, and ending in Zugspitze in the south, the highest point in the country:

Along the way, Wenders portrays the characters in the various settings, as moody and self-absorbed. Several newly-invented characters make their way into the film, including a Viennese man — Bernhard Landau (Peter Kern) who thinks himself a poet and “the industrialist” (Ivan Desny).

The dreariness of the story is greatly offset by the brilliant cinematography of Robby Müller and the simple music of Jürgen Knieper.

Wrong Move can be further appreciated by the knowledge that it was made by Wenders with a crew of only ten or twelve people.

The most gorgeous scene in the film involves a long trek up a winding mountain road, where the characters are filmed against a background of mountains and lush green vineyards. Since Wenders used only direct sound — not a line was overdubbed — and the sound of gunshots resound throughout these scenes (farmers chasing away birds), Wenders cleverly inserted several hunters with guns walking down the path in the opposite direction. It is an exquisite scene, shot in long takes and makes the film feel a certain realism otherwise absent from other parts.

Kinski is entirely mute throughout the film — she speaks not a word. She does have a very strange and erotic nude scene, however.

Film Rating (0-60):

54

The Extras

The Booklet

Fifty-two page booklet featuring essays by Michael Almereyda (Between Me and the World); Allison Anders (A Girl’s Story); James Robison (Utter Detachment, Utter Truth); and Nick Roddick (Keep on Truckin’).

Excellent essays!

Commentary

Featuring Wenders, who speaks fluent English, and thoroughly and honestly dissects his work from 27 years prior.

Robison describes two “enlightening statements” from Wender’s commentary in his essay:

“First, Handke’s screenplay used not a word of the novel’s dialogue and very little of its doings. He took only its engine, that of the Bildungsroman ... in which a young man goes into the world on a journey of self-realization ... the second [is that] the idea of going out into the world to know its ways was wrongheaded, that the theater of experience had changed venues, that Goethe’s novel was irrelevant, and that the signal conceits of the Bildungsroman (of the grand tour as well, as may assume) was a mistaken one.”

Interview 1

With Wenders, directed and conducted by filmmaker Michael Alermeyda.

Over an hour, Wenders further explores the films of the Trilogy, and again honestly critiques his own work.

Interview 2

With actors Vogler and Elisabeth Kreuzer, (Wender’s girlfriend at the time, who plays Janine, a small part; she appears only in one short scene).

Super 8 footage

From the film’s production. One shot shows the entire crew, pushing the Renault which held the camera crew up the mountain!

Extras Rating (0-40):

35

54 + 35 =

89

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