The Weight of the Cinematic Landscape in Wim Wenders' Road Trilogy Films

Introduction

Wim Wenders is one of the lead European film directors known for his road movies. The films that are now named Wenders' Road Trilogy (Alice in the Cities, 1974; Wrong Move, 1975; Kings of the Road, 1976) were not so-called before they were released as a boxset by home video distribution company Criterion in 2016. This naming, which basically started as a sales strategy, has also received a worthy response in academic and particularly non-academic circles. Especially when the first and third films were considered important examples of these road movie genre (Archer, 2016; Cohan and Hark, 1997; Laderman, 2002), it was much easier to add the film in between – which is also a road movie - and form a trio. Although these three films are not carefully pre-planned and announced serials like Krzysztof Kieślowski's famous Three Colors trilogy, they have much more content and stylistic similarities than one might think. But the differences are also at a level that cannot be overlooked.

Laderman (2002) detailed the features of European road films that differ from the genre-defining American road movie. In the American example, not only is there a revolt against the established culture, but this film also evokes a counter-cinema with its episodic narrative, video clip-style musical interludes, and open endings. Despite these alternative formal characteristics, the American road movie ultimately reveals a structure that is closer to the classical cinema. Most examples of European road movies such as Wild Strawberries (1957), Weekend (1967), or Vagabond (1985), however, are representatives of modern cinema from the second half of the 20^th century. The most important feature of these films is that the actual journey is not only a concrete journey with a vehicle but rather the inner journey of the characters. Therefore, traveling or driving a vehicle does not become that important, the point is to transform this experience into a therapeutic interlude that has an impact on the hero's psychology (Laderman, 2002, p. 143). It is primarily a journey of revelation and realization, and the redemption of the main character is seen in all of the films in Wenders’ Road Trilogy. While the experience throughout the movie has a positive effect on the protagonists of Alice and the Cities and Kings of the Road, Wrong Move's protagonist is transformed at the end of the film, but the effect of this transformation on the character is uncertain.