Originally published on The Atlantic Cable, a former transatlantic network and platform for scholars and artists.
In his Road Movie Trilogy (1974-76), German director Wim Wenders examines the relationship between the U.S. and his home country, through an examining of the films’ genre and their representation of Germany’s cultural colonisation post-World War II. Wenders' trilogy considers Germany to have lost a sense of rootedness, seeing it as a nation in crisis in the aftermath of the war, desperately seeking a way to restore its cultural and national identity.
Regarded as saviours after the war, the U.S. initially gave Germany something to hold on to after the downfall of National Socialism and post-war devastation. Decades later however, the nation was subjected to increasing Americanisation while still being in the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, coming to terms with the past. As a filmmaker known for his fascination with and criticism of the U.S., Wenders continuously refers back to these issues and creates an ongoing discussion about them, examining “the pivotal role American mass media and popular culture play in shaping the political, social, and psychological identity of the post-war generation of Germans.”[1]
Throughout all three films Wenders implies that American mass media have blinded us, that there are no valuable images on our television and cinema screens. Alice in the Cities (1974) sets out chronicling the last stages of photographer Philip’s road trip through the U.S. before he heads back to Germany, during which he loses himself in an abundance of images and, due to this oversaturation, is unable to report on what he has seen, while in Wrong Move (1975) white noise on television screens is used to criticise the emptiness of American image-based culture.
In the 1970s, Hollywood cinema dominated German theatres, as also indicated by the theatre owners in Kings of the Road (1976). While arguably many European countries were experiencing the same dominance, Alexander Stephan observed that “Germany was going to be a special case in the Americanisation of Europe, not only politically and economically but culturally, too. (…) Moreover, no country in Europe had so great a need as Germany – its history discredited, its culture distorted and language contaminated by the Nazis – to find a replacement of its lost national identity.”[2]
Wenders has often expressed his affinity with American rock music and films: he grew up with them, was influenced by them, and without them he “would not have survived his childhood without going mad.”[3] Although in Alice, Philip leaves the U.S. because of his own failure, he keeps on reconnecting himself and referring to America when he is back on the European continent. He considers his motel key, which he forgot to return, as a keepsake, and later on attends a Chuck Berry concert and is seen drinking Coca Cola, two American cultural icons present at a moment when he needs clarity to make a decision. Just as Wenders himself got through his childhood with the help of American culture, he lets his characters benefit from it as well.
In Kings of the Road, a quintessential road movie and the most relevant part of the trilogy in light of this theme, Bruno’s truck is filled with U.S. memorabilia; most notably he owns an impressive American record collection. The scenes in which the two protagonists sing along to rock tunes are the ones in which the narrative is least concerned with their troubles.
All throughout the trilogy we are confronted with objects and locations that relate to the U.S., particularly gas stations, road diners, and jukeboxes. Aside from the first part of Alice however, the three stories are entirely filmed in Germany. The Elbe as seen in Wrong Move is not just any river, it is the river that divides East and West Germany, just as in Kings of the Road the characters travel along this cross-country border. By conjuring American influences in the anonymous German landscape, Wenders is, as McCormick has stated, exploring a cultural legacy, using his films as a historical investigation.[4]
Wenders’ trilogy additionally deals with absent mothers and a distorted relationship with paternal figures. Alice’s mother disappears, her father is never shown but appears to be no good; Wilhelm in Wrong Move leaves his oppressive mother and, if any, the film’s father figure is an old man who Wilhelm accuses of being a Nazi; Bruno’s father was killed in the war and his mother is not introduced, while Robert resents his father for chasing his mother away. The maternal figure is missing and has to be found, in a society that suffers from the troubled legacy of Hitler as national patriarch.
As the U.S. was filling the cultural gaps in 1970s Germany, it was also the country German people looked to for guidance and security: a motherland. Gerd Gemünden discusses this phenomenon and its representation in Wenders’ films by stating that all U.S.-related elements in the films are associated with the female: Philip takes responsibility over Alice after the Chuck Berry concert; Bruno fills his lonely, womanless life on the road with his jukebox and projection equipment, and so “mass culture serves as a replacement for women.”[5] Gemünden continues this argument by relating it to the loss of faith in the German nation and the loss of national identity that comes with it. He notes: “the imaginary femininity of mass culture leads to the real exclusion of women on the level of narrative. Thus Wenders’s imaginary America emerges not so much, as if often asserted, as the land of the spiritual ersatz father who is free of a tainted Nazi past, but as the mother figure.”[6]
Using U.S. culture as a replacement originated in the admiration of the Americans as “the bringers of democracy and liberation from Hitler’s national socialism.”[7] Contrary to Germany, the U.S. seemed a peaceful country that not only brought liberation to Europe, but also introduced an entirely new kind of cultural heritage.
However, it is interesting that Wenders does not yet set his stories in the U.S., as he would later do with Paris, Texas (1984). The director was more critical of both cinema and cultural exchange in his earlier films, and although he clearly addresses the importance of America and its influence on Germany, he keeps the balance slightly in favour of his home country, which becomes obvious through character expressions such as “The Yanks have colonised our subconscious” in Kings of the Road.
The images of American landscapes in the opening sequences of Alice in the Cities tell us little to nothing, but representations of American culture placed in a German context can disclose an in-depth cultural commentary in a few images. This way Wenders can stay true to his European film aesthetic and be less influenced by America’s cinematic landscapes, as the criticism on U.S. cinema does become clear at several times in the trilogy. Where, as Baudrillard has noted in America, American reality “was there before the screen was invented, but everything about the way it is today suggests it was invented with the screen in mind”, implying more influential and dynamic landscapes, Wenders’ anonymous German surroundings allow a much more pensive and slow atmosphere.[8] It is this slowness that also emphasises the characters’ desire, a desire that on a narrative level might focus on women, but on a broader level is a hope to return to a clear identity, and when regarding the German-American contrast, a clear national identity.
Not only are these films part of a film genre that is regarded quintessentially American, they are a subtle and layered examination of the influence of the U.S. on German culture and society in the 1970s. By implementing American culture in these films and therefore also in the German landscape, Wenders exposes the need for a new heritage for his own nation, and the way this was compensated for by Americanisation. The characters cling to U.S. culture, just as Germany at that time looked to America for guidance. And although the criticism on this phenomenon is clearly expressed, the moments in the films that refer to the U.S. are often the ones that make the characters feel secure and worriless for a short while.
Through this lens we are able to regard these films as cinematic and even historical documents illustrating a director’s view on his troubled nation, its relation to American culture, and on his and Germany's search for identity.
[1] Gerd Gemünden, ‘Oedi-pal Travels: Gender in the Cinema of Wim Wenders’, in The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Images, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition, ed. by Roger F. Cook and Gerd Gemünden (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), p. 205.
[2] Alexander Stephan, ‘A Special German Case of Cultural Americanization’, in The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945, ed. by Alexander Stephan (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), pp. 69-70.
[3] Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (London: MacMillan Education, 1989), p. 231.
[4] Richard W. McCormick, ‘The Writer in Film: Wrong Move’, in The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Image, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition, ed. by Roger F. Cook and Gerd Gemünden (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), p. 102.
[5] Gemünden, p. 207.
[6] Ibid., p. 208.
[7] Stuart Taberner, ‘Alice in den Städten’, in European Cinema: An Introduction, ed. by Jill Forbes and Sarah Street (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2000), p. 122.
[8] Jean Baudrillard, America (London: Verso), p. 55.
In his Road Movie Trilogy (1974-76), German director Wim Wenders examines the relationship between the U.S. and his home country, through an examining of the films’ genre and their representation of Germany’s cultural colonisation post-World War II. Wenders' trilogy considers Germany to have lost a sense of rootedness, seeing it as a nation in crisis in the aftermath of the war, desperately seeking a way to restore its cultural and national identity.
Regarded as saviours after the war, the U.S. initially gave Germany something to hold on to after the downfall of National Socialism and post-war devastation. Decades later however, the nation was subjected to increasing Americanisation while still being in the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, coming to terms with the past. As a filmmaker known for his fascination with and criticism of the U.S., Wenders continuously refers back to these issues and creates an ongoing discussion about them, examining “the pivotal role American mass media and popular culture play in shaping the political, social, and psychological identity of the post-war generation of Germans.”[1]
Throughout all three films Wenders implies that American mass media have blinded us, that there are no valuable images on our television and cinema screens. Alice in the Cities (1974) sets out chronicling the last stages of photographer Philip’s road trip through the U.S. before he heads back to Germany, during which he loses himself in an abundance of images and, due to this oversaturation, is unable to report on what he has seen, while in Wrong Move (1975) white noise on television screens is used to criticise the emptiness of American image-based culture.
In the 1970s, Hollywood cinema dominated German theatres, as also indicated by the theatre owners in Kings of the Road (1976). While arguably many European countries were experiencing the same dominance, Alexander Stephan observed that “Germany was going to be a special case in the Americanisation of Europe, not only politically and economically but culturally, too. (…) Moreover, no country in Europe had so great a need as Germany – its history discredited, its culture distorted and language contaminated by the Nazis – to find a replacement of its lost national identity.”[2]
Wenders has often expressed his affinity with American rock music and films: he grew up with them, was influenced by them, and without them he “would not have survived his childhood without going mad.”[3] Although in Alice, Philip leaves the U.S. because of his own failure, he keeps on reconnecting himself and referring to America when he is back on the European continent. He considers his motel key, which he forgot to return, as a keepsake, and later on attends a Chuck Berry concert and is seen drinking Coca Cola, two American cultural icons present at a moment when he needs clarity to make a decision. Just as Wenders himself got through his childhood with the help of American culture, he lets his characters benefit from it as well.
In Kings of the Road, a quintessential road movie and the most relevant part of the trilogy in light of this theme, Bruno’s truck is filled with U.S. memorabilia; most notably he owns an impressive American record collection. The scenes in which the two protagonists sing along to rock tunes are the ones in which the narrative is least concerned with their troubles.
All throughout the trilogy we are confronted with objects and locations that relate to the U.S., particularly gas stations, road diners, and jukeboxes. Aside from the first part of Alice however, the three stories are entirely filmed in Germany. The Elbe as seen in Wrong Move is not just any river, it is the river that divides East and West Germany, just as in Kings of the Road the characters travel along this cross-country border. By conjuring American influences in the anonymous German landscape, Wenders is, as McCormick has stated, exploring a cultural legacy, using his films as a historical investigation.[4]
Wenders’ trilogy additionally deals with absent mothers and a distorted relationship with paternal figures. Alice’s mother disappears, her father is never shown but appears to be no good; Wilhelm in Wrong Move leaves his oppressive mother and, if any, the film’s father figure is an old man who Wilhelm accuses of being a Nazi; Bruno’s father was killed in the war and his mother is not introduced, while Robert resents his father for chasing his mother away. The maternal figure is missing and has to be found, in a society that suffers from the troubled legacy of Hitler as national patriarch.
As the U.S. was filling the cultural gaps in 1970s Germany, it was also the country German people looked to for guidance and security: a motherland. Gerd Gemünden discusses this phenomenon and its representation in Wenders’ films by stating that all U.S.-related elements in the films are associated with the female: Philip takes responsibility over Alice after the Chuck Berry concert; Bruno fills his lonely, womanless life on the road with his jukebox and projection equipment, and so “mass culture serves as a replacement for women.”[5] Gemünden continues this argument by relating it to the loss of faith in the German nation and the loss of national identity that comes with it. He notes: “the imaginary femininity of mass culture leads to the real exclusion of women on the level of narrative. Thus Wenders’s imaginary America emerges not so much, as if often asserted, as the land of the spiritual ersatz father who is free of a tainted Nazi past, but as the mother figure.”[6]
Using U.S. culture as a replacement originated in the admiration of the Americans as “the bringers of democracy and liberation from Hitler’s national socialism.”[7] Contrary to Germany, the U.S. seemed a peaceful country that not only brought liberation to Europe, but also introduced an entirely new kind of cultural heritage.
However, it is interesting that Wenders does not yet set his stories in the U.S., as he would later do with Paris, Texas (1984). The director was more critical of both cinema and cultural exchange in his earlier films, and although he clearly addresses the importance of America and its influence on Germany, he keeps the balance slightly in favour of his home country, which becomes obvious through character expressions such as “The Yanks have colonised our subconscious” in Kings of the Road.
The images of American landscapes in the opening sequences of Alice in the Cities tell us little to nothing, but representations of American culture placed in a German context can disclose an in-depth cultural commentary in a few images. This way Wenders can stay true to his European film aesthetic and be less influenced by America’s cinematic landscapes, as the criticism on U.S. cinema does become clear at several times in the trilogy. Where, as Baudrillard has noted in America, American reality “was there before the screen was invented, but everything about the way it is today suggests it was invented with the screen in mind”, implying more influential and dynamic landscapes, Wenders’ anonymous German surroundings allow a much more pensive and slow atmosphere.[8] It is this slowness that also emphasises the characters’ desire, a desire that on a narrative level might focus on women, but on a broader level is a hope to return to a clear identity, and when regarding the German-American contrast, a clear national identity.
Not only are these films part of a film genre that is regarded quintessentially American, they are a subtle and layered examination of the influence of the U.S. on German culture and society in the 1970s. By implementing American culture in these films and therefore also in the German landscape, Wenders exposes the need for a new heritage for his own nation, and the way this was compensated for by Americanisation. The characters cling to U.S. culture, just as Germany at that time looked to America for guidance. And although the criticism on this phenomenon is clearly expressed, the moments in the films that refer to the U.S. are often the ones that make the characters feel secure and worriless for a short while.
Through this lens we are able to regard these films as cinematic and even historical documents illustrating a director’s view on his troubled nation, its relation to American culture, and on his and Germany's search for identity.
[1] Gerd Gemünden, ‘Oedi-pal Travels: Gender in the Cinema of Wim Wenders’, in The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Images, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition, ed. by Roger F. Cook and Gerd Gemünden (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), p. 205.
[2] Alexander Stephan, ‘A Special German Case of Cultural Americanization’, in The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945, ed. by Alexander Stephan (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), pp. 69-70.
[3] Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (London: MacMillan Education, 1989), p. 231.
[4] Richard W. McCormick, ‘The Writer in Film: Wrong Move’, in The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Image, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition, ed. by Roger F. Cook and Gerd Gemünden (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), p. 102.
[5] Gemünden, p. 207.
[6] Ibid., p. 208.
[7] Stuart Taberner, ‘Alice in den Städten’, in European Cinema: An Introduction, ed. by Jill Forbes and Sarah Street (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2000), p. 122.
[8] Jean Baudrillard, America (London: Verso), p. 55.