Enrique Ramirez on Wim Wenders' 1984 classic
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| A still from Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) |
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| A still from Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) |
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| A still from Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) |
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| A still from Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) |
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| A still from Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) |
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| A still from Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) |
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| A still from Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) |
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| A still from Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) |
In my experience no other American city seems so like a mirage. Despite its appearance in dozens of major films, it’s hard to remember what the fourth largest city in the U.S.A. actually looks like. Houston is not a place ingrained in cinematic memory. There is no equivalent here of the grainy montage that opens Woody Allen’s Manhattan or the majestic 70mm shot of the Golden Gate Bridge that pins Vertigo to San Francisco. There are no obvious landmarks like the concrete aqueduct of the Los Angeles River, which appears in countless films. Even in the Texas screen canon, Houston is easily outshined by the mid-’50s Hollywood epic Giant, with its desert-sublime images of the plains around Marfa, or by the indie classic Slacker, with its closely observed scenes of Austin, or even by the soap opera Dallas, with its aerial views of downtown towers and looping freeways.Also at A Piece of Monologue:
So maybe it’s not surprising that the film that best captures Houston — its elusive anonymity, its persistent newness — doesn’t even reach the city until two-thirds of the way through. Paris, Texas, directed by Wim Wenders and released in 1984, opens on a solitary figure walking amid sun-drenched canyons and wind-blasted calderas. We learn that this man is Travis Henderson (he’s played by Harry Dean Stanton) and that four years ago he left his wife and young son and has been wandering in the wilderness ever since. We don’t know why he left. All we know is that he is out of touch, out of place, maybe out of time. Soon Travis collapses in a rundown café near the old mining town of Terlingua, Texas. He is then rescued by his brother, Walt, a billboard salesman (played by Dean Stockwell), who brings him home to Los Angeles, where Travis is reunited with his young son, Hunter. Hoping to make amends for his absence, he decides to drive the boy back to Texas — to Houston — to reunite with his mother, Jane. [Read More]
