Movies - Paris, Texas

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Paris, Texas (1984) is a movie directed by Wim Wenders and is probably his most well-known and critically acclaimed work (in the English speaking world, at least). Sam Shepard wrote the screenplay; the distinctive musical score was composed by Ry Cooder; cinematography was by Robby Muller.

The film stars Harry Dean Stanton as Travis, an amnesiac who has been lost for four years and is taken in by his brother (played by Dean Stockwell). He later tries to put his life back together and understand what happened between him and his wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski) and son Hunter (Hunter Carson).

The film is named after the Texan town of Paris, although no footage is shot there. Paris, Texas is notable for stunning cinematography of the Texan landscape. The first shot is a bird's eye-view of the desert, a bleak, dry, alien landscape. A hawk lands on a boulder. A man walking alone in the desert stops and looks. He is wearing a cheap Mexican suit, a red baseball cap and has several days of stubble, his ankles are bandaged. He staggers, lost and alone. His clothes are covered in dust and damp with sweat. The scenery swims by - old advertisement billboards, placards, graffitis, rusty iron carcasses, old railway lines, neon signs, motels, roads seemingly never-ending, LA, finally culminating with some famous scenes shot outside a drive-through bank in down-town Houston. The cinematography is typical of Robby Muller's work, a long-time collaborator of Wim Wenders.

A central theme is social alienation, particularly in an American context. The Texan scenery, both the vastness of the landscape on the road, and the architecture in the then booming Houston stimulates this atmosphere. The haunting slide-guitar sound-track by Ry Cooder, based on Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground," echoes the scenery and the mood. For the mostly European audience, this film set a cultural reference point in many people's subconscious of what America should look and feel like.

The film has a critical and cult following and it won the 1984 Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival.

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