Between ‘Alice in den Städten‘ (‘Alice in the Cities‘ – 1974) and ‘Perfect Days’ (2023) 49 years have passed. 49 years in which the career of German director Wim Wenders has developed in many and sometimes surprising directions. It just so happens that I saw the feature film first, or the most recent one, and only then the 1974 film, Wenders‘ first successful film and the film that opened what would later be called ‘Wim Wenders’ trilogy of road movies’ . I found that the two films, separated by almost half a century, have many points in common: the deep respect for the cinematic masters who inspired him, the curiosity and openness to other cultures of the world, the soundtrack tribute to American rock and especially the believable and interesting characters, who struggle with life but who, in these struggles, look for their resources within themselves, so that in crisis situations they behave altruistically and humanely, helping and bringing light to those who are lucky enough to be around them .
‘Alice in den Städten‘ begins with the writer and journalist Philip Winter’s crisis of inspiration. The hero was perhaps an alter-ego of the young director who was still searching his ways. A journey of several weeks in Deep America with its roads and motels had resulted in nothing but a box of Polaroid photographs, perhaps a metaphor for the inability to transform experiences of life into art, perhaps a surrogate for the camera of the filmmaker. Artistically and financially exhausted, the young man tries to return home to Germany from New York, but a strike at German airports spoils his plans. At the Pan Am counter, he meets Lisa, a young mother with a nine-year-old daughter named Alice, who was in the same situation. They are forced to stay overnight in New York. The next morning, Philip wakes up to find Lisa gone and with the little girl entrusted to his care. A meeting is set in a few days at the airport in Amsterdam. If the situation seems complicated (and would even be legally impossible today) imagine the dilemma in which Philip finds himself. When the mother does not show up for the meeting in Amsterdam either, the young writer is at the beginning of a journey with Alice through Germany, in search of the grandmother of whom she remembers only a few vague details. A special bond is formed between Philip and the curious, sympathetic girl with the moods of any nine-year-old girl, a meeting of two solitudes, for which neither of them was ready.
Just like in the film he would make half a century later, Wim Wenders‘ characters constantly maintain an aura of mystery around them. We never find out how Alice’s mother was able to entrust her to a man she had met only hours before, or why he didn’t show up at the meeting in Amsterdam. Half a century later, Hirayama, the main character of ‘Perfect Days’, will also be a mystery to viewers due to his culture and hobbies that do not match his job and social status at all. His heroes always get along better with those around them than with society as a whole. But Wenders is more interested in something else – the human profile and how characters interact and respond to life’s challenges. Philip is played by Rüdiger Vogler, the actor who will star in all three films of the trilogy, along with Lisa Kreuzer (Wenders’ wife at the time) who plays the role of the mysterious mother. The choice of the actress to play Alice is of course one of the reasons for the film’s success. The chosen girl, creator of an unforgettable character, is called Yella Rottländer. She did not pursue an acting career and is today a physician and scientific researcher at a medical clinic in Switzerland. As a means of expression, Wenders was already a trained filmmaker. The cinematography combines, when necessary, Ozu’s framing with the camera mobility assimilated from the French New Wave. The American experience (the roads, the motels, New York) and the German experience (the Rhine valley and the Ruhr industrial area) are immersive, transporting us in time. John Ford, one of his models, is quoted directly by Wenders through the TV in the motel or the newspaper article Philip reads on the train. Wenders allows himself a cameo appearance, as Hitchcock did in each of his films. Like his character, Wenders was at a crossroads—artistically and in life—when this film began. At its end, things were much clearer, and German cinema and the genre of road movies had acquired one of the reference films.