Paris Texas is the film that brought Wim Wenders international acclaim (the Palme d’Or at Cannes and a British Academy Award). Written by Sam Shepard, the script explores the split between a sentimental attachment to the ideal of family and the impossibility of sustaining this ideal in practice. Wenders turns the piece into another of his spiritual odysseys, a sort of pilgrim’s progress that starts literally in the Valley of Death as the lost hero (Harry Dean Stanton) emerges from the desert and undergoes a painful journey, through which he regains contact with reality, home and roots. Stunningly photographed by Robby Muller, few films have related landscape so eloquently to the psyche of its characters.

U.K.-W. Germany-France, 1984.
With: Dean Stockwell, Nastassja Kinski.
148 mins.