Summer in the City

Titled in English, made on a shoestring provided by the Munich film school, Wenders' first feature - 'My longest short', as he wryly put it - has a plot about an ex-jailbird drifting through Germany until he escapes, not to the America of his dreams but to Holland. Essentially, though, it's a documentary about the time and the place, and as such it's a fascinating source book for Wenders' later work. The aimless odyssey with ubiquitous rock songs; the endless shots (by Robby Müller) of landscapes and nocturnal streets seen speeding by from the windows of cars and trains; the tangential encounters with strange friends or friendly strangers; the laments for lost movie palaces; above all, the celebration of obsessive enthusiasms, including a delightfully tangled attempt by someone never seen again to articulate the solemnity of John Wayne's association with the Three Wise Men in Ford's Three Godfathers.