Three things to know about… Paris Texas
Wim Wenders’ 1984 Palme d’Or is in the spotlight this evening on France 4. While waiting for the filmmaker to be rewarded at the Lumière festival next week.
One year after Tim Burton, it’s Wim Wenders who will receive the Lumière Prize during the festival organized by Thierry Frémaux in Lyon. And the film chosen by the festival to illustrate the poster for this 15th editionscheduled from October 14 to 22, is none other than Paris, Texas.
In 1984, this drama starring Nastassja Kinski, Harry Dean Stanton and Dean Stockwell won the Palme d’Or. Since then, it has continued to fascinate new generations of spectators.
On the occasion of its rebroadcast on France 4, a look back at some manufacturing anecdotes.
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The Wim Wenders-Sam Shepard friendship
A lover of the American myth since his youth, the German Wim Wenders moved there in 1977 at the invitation of Francis Ford Coppola who suggested that he direct Hammeta film about the writer Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) that it produces. This adventure full of conflicts in all directions turns into a nightmare and only ends five years later. But in all this complex process, he made a friend, actor and playwright Sam Shepard. He was the one the filmmaker wanted to play Hammett before the Orion studio vetoed it. And the two men then swore to each other that they would meet again… without realizing that it would happen so quickly. Because when Shepard sends Wenders his novel Motel chronicles before its publication, the filmmaker fell in love at first sight. He knows he has his next film. Its real American film. So they start working on the script together. Wenders wants to stay faithful to the book and dreams of a road movie crossing the United States to Canada. Shepard intends to betray his own story and wishes to concentrate his story in the single state of Texas. They exchange, parley. And they agree on the story of Travis who suddenly reappears without explanation after four years of wandering spent in Mexico and leaves for Texas in search of the woman he loved and their son. Paris Texas has just seen the light of day. Wenders obviously also wants Shepard to play Travis. But he declines: he cannot bring himself to leave Jessica Lange with whom he has just fallen in love on the set of French and goes to tour with her Harvests of Wrath by Richard Pierce. But Shepard still suggests the idea of his “replacement”: Harry Dean Stanton who, in his 30-year career, had never had the right to a leading role.
France in force
Scalded cat fears cold water. For this American film, Wenders therefore chose German and French producers. And among them, a legend: Anatole Dauman, the producer ofHiroshima My loveof The Pierof The Wild Planetof The Empire of the Senses or even Drumco- Palmé d’Or in 79. And he is not the only Frenchman on this plateau: Jean-Paul Mugel (César winner for Farinelli by Gérard Corbiau, ten years later) found herself in charge of sound, Agnès Godard, Claire Denis’ future appointed director of photography, worked there as a camera assistant. And this same Claire Denis directly assists Wenders on the set, as she will again in 1987 for Wings of Desire before beginning his career as a filmmaker the following year with Chocolat.
America is sulking
Palme d’Or at Cannes before more than two million French people rushed to discover it in theaters, Paris Texas had everything to make a serious Oscar contender. And when we see the candidates in the race for the best film statuette in 85 – The tearing, The Road to India, Seasons of the Heart, A soldier’s story and, the winner, Amadeus – Paris Texas had easily enough to enter the Top 5. But its local distributor, the all-powerful Fox, does not believe in it and therefore does not invest. But at the Oscars, money is the key. Hence the zero points in the nominations even for Harry Dean Stanton.
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