The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway

by Graf, Alexander

• ISBN13: 9781903364291
• ISBN10: 1903364299
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-12-01
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway is a new study of the films of this most prominent of German directors, and penetrates the seductive sounds and images for which he is best known. The book analyses the individual films in the context of a preoccupation central to all of Wenders' work and writings: why modern cinema - a recording art, solely composed of sounds and images - naturally developed into a primarily narrative medium, a domain traditionally associated with words and sentences? With its emphasis on analysing the films themselves, this book identifies and critically elucidates Wenders' chief artistic motivation: that the act of seeing can constitute a creative act in its own right.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction	p. 1
On the Production of Images	p. 19
The camera never lies: image and reality	p. 19
Rescuing physical reality	p. 22
The film image as illusion of reality	p. 25
The inflation and reproduction of images	p. 27
Television and the commercialisation of images	p. 27
Cinema films in television	p. 32
On the Construction of Narratives	p. 37
Incompatibility of images and narrative	p. 37
Narrative as structure	p. 41
Story as 'vampire'	p. 46
Road movies and episodic narrative structure	p. 48
Understatement of dramatic highlights	p. 54
Temporal dilation in the filmic story	p. 56
Wenders' aesthetic of creative perception	p. 64
Alice in the Cities	p. 72
Paris, Texas	p. 92
Tokyo Ga	p. 105
Wings of Desire	p. 112
The Million Dollar Hotel	p. 131
Lisbon Story	p. 139
Conclusion	p. 151
Notes	p. 159
Filmography	p. 167
Bibligraphy	p. 173
Index	p. 177
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