The Wim Wenders Collection Volume 2

The Wim Wenders Collection, Vol. 2 (8-disc)

The Scarlet Letter (1973)

Aufzeichnungen zu Kleidern und Städten aka Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1975)

The American Friend aka Der Amerikanische Freund (1977)

Falsche Bewegung aka The Wrong Move (1979)

Lightning Over Water (1980) Tokyo-Ga (1985) Room 666 (1985)

A Trick of the Light aka Brothers Skladanowsky (1995)

Titles

Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe aka The Scarlet Letter
Stars Senta Berger , Rafael Albaicín and Ángel Álvarez
Directors: Wim Wenders

Aired - March 13th, 1973 (TV premiere)
Genres: Drama / History
Synopsis - In 17th-century Salem, Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A because she is an adulteress, with a child out of wedlock. For seven years, she has refused to name the father. A vigorous older stranger arrives, recognized by Hester but unknown to others as her missing husband. Wenders take on the classic novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Aufzeichnungen zu Kleidern und Städten aka Notebook on Cities and Clothes
Stars Wim Wenders, Yohji Yamamoto
Directors: Wim Wenders

Theatrical Release Date: 1975
Genres: Documentary
Synopsis - Wim Wenders talks with Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto about the creative process and ponders the relationship between cities, identity and the cinema in the digital age.

The American Friend
Stars Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gérard Blain, Nicholas Ray
Directors: Wim Wenders
Genres: Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Drama
Synopsis Jonathan Zimmermann, a picture framer in Hamburg is diagnosed as having leukemia. Ripley, an American art dealer who deals in forgeries, uses this fact to arrange for a mob associate of his to recruit Zimmermann as a hit man. Zimmermann agrees to this to ensure his family's financial future. Zimmermann descends into a nightmare world of deceit and double dealing. The narrative acts as a metaphor for the relationship between American (Hollywood) and post-war German culture. The appearance of several Hollywood directors in cameo roles underlines this.

Falsche Bewegung aka The Wrong Move
Stars Rüdiger Vogler, Hans Christian Blech, Hanna Schygulla, Nastassja Kinski, Peter Kern
Directors: Wim Wenders
Theatrical Release Date: April 1979
Genres: Drama
Synopsis Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She's an acrobat in market squares for spare change. An actress, whom Wilhelm gazes at, joins them. Then, a plump young man introduces himself, having heard them talk of poetry. He takes them to his uncle's, except it's the wrong house; they interrupt a man's suicide. He invites them to stay. The actress tries to connect to Wilhelm. Couplings and rare bursts of feeling come as surprises; other characters remain alone.

Lightning Over Water
Stars Gerry Bamman, Ronee Blakley, Pierre Cottrell, Stefan Czapsky, Mitch Dubin
Directors: Nicholas Ray, Wim Wenders

Theatrical Release Date: September 11th, 1980 (Toronto Film Festival)
Genres: Documentary, Drama
Synopsis - Wim Wenders helps his friend Nicholas Ray realize his last wish of completing a final film before his imminent death from cancer.

Tokyo-Ga
Stars Chishu Ryu, Werner Herzog, Yuuharu Atsuta, Chris Marker
Directors: Wim Wenders
Theatrical Release Date: April 26, 1985
Genres: Documentary
Synopsis Wim Wenders travels to Japan in search of the Tokyo seen in the films of great master Yasujiro Ozu.

Room 666
Stars Chantal Akerman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Maroun Bagdadi, Ana Carolina, Mike De Leon
Directors: Wim Wenders
Theatrical Release Date: January 23, 1985
Genres: Documentary
Synopsis During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wenders asks a number of film directors from around the world to get, each one at a time, into a hotel room, turn on the camera and sound recorder, and, in solitude, answer a simple question: "What is the future of cinema?".

A Trick of the Light

Stars Nadine Buettner, Udo Kier, Wim Wenders
Directors: Wim Wenders
Theatrical Release Date: November 28th, 1995
Genres: Documentary
Synopsis - Award-winning Documentary that has Wim Wenders using his duties as guest professor of the Munich film school (HFF) to provide his students with as much practical training as possible by just making films. But what started out as an ordinary task making a short about the famous Skladanowsky brothers and their Bioskop projector turned into a feature-length film.

Posters

Theatrical Releases: 1973- 1995

DVD Reviews

DVD Review: Anchor Bay (8-disc) - Region 1 - NTSC

DVD Box Cover		CLICK to order from:
Distribution	Anchor Bay - Region 1 - NTSC
Runtime	1:25:48 + 1:21:12 + 2:05:36 + 1:39:03 + 1:39:51 + 1:29:57 + 1:31:57 + 45:38 + 1:19:18 = over 12 hours
Video	Original Aspect Ratio(s) Average Bitrate: 6.67 mb/s NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bit: The Scarlet Letter
Bit: Notebook on Cities and Clothes
Bit: The American Friend
Bit: The Wrong Move
Bit: Lightning Over Water
Bit: Tokyo-Ga
Bit: Room 666
Bit: A Trick of the Light
Audio	Original
Subtitles	Foreign language films have optional English subtitles
Features	Release Information: Studio: Anchor Bay Aspect Ratio: Original aspect Ratio(s) where widescreen Edition Details: • Director Commntary on every film DVD Release Date: December 5th, 2006 8 slim transparent keep cases inside a cardboard box (see image at top) Chapters: various

Comments:

I was surprised at how well produced this Anchor Bay boxset is. We get 7 progressively transferred films (The Wrong Move appears to be interlaced) - over 7 single-layered DVDs and one dual-layered (The American Friend) - each housed in their own slim, transparent case comfortably fitting in a sturdy cardboard box with slanted slideout (see image above). All widescreen films are anamorphic and all 8 offer an optional director commentary. I see no sign of digital manipulation and the prints are all very clean. I noted no glaring flaws in the audio. Every transfer is in the NTSC standard in the following codes -

The Scarlet Letter is region 1.
Notebook on Cities and Clothes is region 0.
The American Friend is region 0.
The Wrong Move is region 1.
Lightning Over Water is region 0.
Tokyo-Ga is region 1.
Room 666 is region 1.
A Trick of the Light is region 1.

Wenders has a very comfortable manner in his audio commentaries and I'll wager that I have heard him more than any other individual as he always seems to make himself available for the supplements on his films-to-DVD. They are all adequate to fairly good in this package - he has a wealth of film knowledge to draw upon and has excellent recall on the production details of his shoots.

NOTE: Lightning Over Water has a 38 minute film on Nick Ray (Nicholas Ray - Especially For Pierre) in addition to the commentary.

Sundry - The American Friend disc is exactly the same as Anchor Bay's 2003 release (compared to the European PAL edition HERE). I expect their Notebook on Cities and Clothes and Lightning Over Water (both from 2003) are duplicates as well - same menus and extras too. Tokyo-Ga looks to have less artifacts than the one of the Criterion Late Spring (reviewed HERE) plus it has the Wenders commentary.

Wim Wenders can be an acquired taste but once you immerse yourself in his cinema - you usually become a full convert... and it then seems a short step to appreciate most of his complete body of work. This package has 4 rare and fascinating documentaries. I particularly enjoyed Room 666 and Lightning Over Water. I was impressed with Anchor Bay's work here and find it a reasonable price - especially for 8 films all with director commentaries. This is a damn good boxset. We recommend!

Gary W. Tooze

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