Paris, Texas (1984)

“The cinematography, consisting of wide shots, vacant landscapes and minimalist imagery, gives Paris, Texas a distinct visual style that perfectly complements the mysterious and emotional core of its story.” – FandomWire

SYNOPSIS

“New German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas, a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sam Shepard. Paris, Texas follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski). From this simple setup, Wenders and Shepard produce a powerful statement on codes of masculinity and the myth of the American family, as well as an exquisite visual exploration of a vast, crumbling world of canyons and neon.” – Janus Films

PROGRAM NOTE

A man emerges from the desert like a figure out of myth: silent, bearded, and unmoored from the world he once knew. In Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders turns this arresting image into a deeply felt modern fable about loss, love, and the difficult grace of letting go. Harry Dean Stanton gives one of the great performances in American cinema as Travis Henderson, a broken wanderer who slowly, haltingly attempts to reconnect with the family he abandoned years earlier. What unfolds is not a conventional story of redemption, but a quietly epic journey shaped by absence, memory, and sacrifice. 

Written by acclaimed playwright Sam Shepard and shot in ravishing color by Robby Müller, with compositions recalling the spare geometry and melancholy of Edward Hopper, Wenders reimagines American myths through a distinctly European lens, transforming highways, motels, and desert horizons into landscapes of longing. Like Wenders’s other road movies, Paris, Texas is fascinated less by destinations than by the spaces between people – by what cannot be said, and the indirect ways we communicate when words fail. Anchored by Ry Cooder’s mournful slide-guitar score and culminating in one of the most devastatingly tender final acts in cinema, Paris, Texas endures as a haunting meditation on exile, connection, and the painful beauty of love freely given.