Wim Wenders turns 80: the legacy of the master of New German Cinema

On August 14, Wim Wenders, the most powerful and popular voice of new German cinema, turns 80, and his figure now stands out as unique, even compared to the era of young auteurs who revolutionized cinematic codes in the 1970s.

Born in Dusseldorf in 1945, just two months after the capitulation of Nazi Germany, the rebellious son of a successful doctor had a varied upbringing (he came from a devout Catholic family and wanted to be a priest as a child), which soon gave way to his passion for the camera: he graduated from the liberal arts institute in Oberhausen, enrolled in medicine following in his father's footsteps, switched to philosophy, but after just one semester he abandoned his studies to pursue his true calling.

In 1966, he moved to Paris, following the call of Henri Langlois's Cinémathèque Française, where he spent all his free time, when not earning a living as a printmaker in the studio of American artist Johnny Friedlander, who was later forced to abandon his dream of becoming a painter. From that time, he fondly recalls managing to see at least four films a day, seven on weekends.

It is worth focusing on Wenders ' early years, as his inclinations would later shift to cinema, to which he began to actively dedicate himself as soon as he returned home, where he attended classes at the Munich Film Academy and made his first short films between 1967 and 1970.

A regular at film clubs, a budding film critic and friend of the Austrian playwright Peter Handke , he was captivated by the mastery of an author like Alexander Kluge, who soon associated him with the New German Cinema movement alongside young artists such as Herzog, Fassbinder, Reitz and Fleichmann, encouraging him to make his feature film debut in 1970 with Summer in the City .

Just a year later, Wenders was already an authoritative voice of the movement with The Goalkeeper's Fear Before the Penalty (co-written with Handke) and later with the unexpected The Scarlet Letter , based on Hawthorne's novel.

The atmosphere in Munich in those years was electric, youthful, and open to all artistic experiences, with music at its center. Thus, Wim (a Danish contraction of his real name, Wilhelm) developed a passion for rock (he would also play in some amateur bands), saw its founding myths in the world of American film and music, and discovered the multicultural atmosphere of West Berlin, where he would later settle.

With his Time Trilogy (or Street Trilogy ), he quickly became a prominent filmmaker, with films such as Alice in the Cities , False Motion , and The Course of Time , where Rüdiger Vogler was his on-screen alter ego. From 1975, he also began producing himself, and the worldwide success of The American Friend , starring Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz, opened the doors to Hollywood, where he would live for a time, fascinated by the vast American spaces, and where he would also focus his creative gaze as a photographer, an art form that would eventually become even more important to him than cinema.

Its international debut was contradictory: while Nick's Movie paid tribute to one of its most beloved directors, Nicholas Ray, and opened a new chapter in documentary cinema, the film noir Hammet , produced by Francis Coppola, failed to connect with Hollywood, and the film remained confined in a limbo between mannerism and entertainment.

Wenders made up for it in 1982, upon his return to Germany, with The State of Things , which won the Golden Lion at Venice and is a passionate reflection on his craft, shot in striking black and white that captivated critics and established him as an internationally renowned auteur. Two years later, thanks to his collaboration with Sam Shepard (who also co-starred in the film with Nastassja Kinski), he achieved his biggest American success with Paris, Texas , which earned him the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

Although his later work includes films of great impact such as Wings of Desire (with Bruno Ganz and Peter Falk) in 1987, it can be said that the point of arrival of his professional beginnings is situated between the monumental Until the End of the World (finished in 1991 and in which he poured all his passion for rock collaborating with great bands such as U2, Talking Heads, Lou Reed and Nick Cave) and Far Away, Incredibly Close , with which he returned to the Berlin scene in 1993.

From then on, although he frequented narrative cinema on several occasions, it is in documentary and photography where he consolidated himself as a master: Buena Vista Social Club , Lisboa Story , Tokyo Ga , the 3D film Pina , The Salt of the Earth with Sebastiao Salgado , even Pope Francis , directed with the approval of Pope Bergoglio in 2018.

Meanwhile, he traveled the world with magnificent photography exhibitions (imported to Italy by Contrasto and Solares), collaborated with Antonioni on Beyond the Clouds (1995), visited Sicily to direct Palermo Shooting , founded the Academy that annually awards the European Academy Prize (EFA), and entrusted his idea of ​​the image to the magnificent essay The Act of Seeing (1992). When many already considered him a dean of cinema history, he surprised everyone in 2023 by directing the film that many consider one of his masterpieces, born from the most unexpected commission.

The company that manages the city's public baths called him to Tokyo for a promotional documentary. Wenders , passionate about the idea of a fiction film that reflects the poetics of one of its key authors, the Japanese master Yasujirō Ozu, brought Perfect Days to Cannes. It was a resounding success with both audiences and critics.