Sherry Chandler

Paris, Texas

This 1984 Wim Wenders film completely escaped me when it was released and won the Palme d’Or. Maybe that was because I had five-year-old twins and my cultural horizon was blocked by high blue mountains of Smurfs. Seems like a good excuse, anyway.

I chased it down now, of course, because Ry Cooder did the sound track, and an excellent sound track it is. “Haunting,” says Wikipedia, and I’d agree. It’s all a slide-guitar adaptation of Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.” (Johnson’s own version of this song was sent out on Voyager, and Cooder calls it “the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music.”)

The cinematography is amazing, too. It was shot in the days before digital enhancement and the film is worth just watching. Director of Photography was Robby Müller, who also did the black-and-white Dead Man. There’s a neat little appearance by John Lurie, too, who plays Jack, one of the three fugitives in Down By Law. So this gets me my six degrees of separation from Jim Jarmusch.

A friend tells me that she talked her husband into seeing “Paris, Texas” when it first came out and she has never been able to live it down. Now whenever she wants to go and see an arty film, husband reminds her of the terrible “Paris, Texas.”

I’ll grant you it’s slow and odd by American standards. Wikipedia tells us it has a certain cult following, and not all cult movies are wonderful. If you expect any movie set in Texas to be filled with horses and six-guns, you’ll be disappointed.

For me, there was Sam Shepard dialogue, excellent quirky charming performances from Harry Dean Stanton (another Kentuckian), Dean Stockwell, and Nastassja Kinski, a wonderful soundtrack, and beautiful cinematography. If the ending maybe didn’t seem wholly of a piece with the beginning, I’ll forgive it.

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