Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40600 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-09-02
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 139 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Something like a perfect artistic union is achieved in the major components of Paris, Texas: the twang of Ry Cooder's guitar, the lonely light of Robbie Muller's camera, the craggy landscape of Harry Dean Stanton's face. In his greatest role, longtime character actor Stanton plays a man brought back to his old life after wandering in the desert (or somewhere) for four years. He has a 7-year-old son to get to know, and his wife has gone missing. The material is much in the wanderlust spirit of director Wim Wenders, working from a script by Sam Shepard and L.M. Kit Carson. If the long climactic conversation between Stanton and Nastassja Kinski renders the movie uneven and slightly inscrutable, it's hard to think of a more fitting ending--and besides, the achingly empty American spaces stick longer in the memory than the dialogue. Winner of the top prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. --Robert Horton

Special Features
16:9 Wide Screen
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
Deleted Scenes
Featurette On Wim Wenders And Klaus Kinski
Audio Commentary
Biographies
Filmographies
Photo Gallery

Synopsis
Winner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984, Wim Wenders's PARIS, TEXAS tells the haunting story of an amnesiac (Harry Dean Stanton) and his struggle to rebuild his shattered life. Featuring a story by Sam Shepard and a renowned score by Ry Cooder, the film also stars Nastassja Kinski and Dean Stockwell.

Customer Reviews

Visually Magnificent, Aurally Haunting....
What an impressive film! Every frame is a carefully positioned artwork! The colours are unearthly and fantastic! Ry Cooders haunting score rolls around in your head, like a tumbleweed, for days after you see this movie... At over 2 hours though, one needs to be in the right frame of mind to approach this film. The plot is slow, and simple, but the beauty is in the way it depicts our painful human existence and the mistakes we make along the way.
Now when are we going to get other Wim Wenders classics like 'Faraway, So Close' on region 2 dvd?

DVD at last, but spoiled by technical flaws
I first saw this movie in 1985 at The Screen on Baker Street, and I still remember that the soundtrack was turned up painfully loud. Nevertheless, I loved the movie and I have watched it countless times since on VHS. Strange, then, to find that the long-awaited DVD issue also has major problems with the soundtrack. Nevertheless, whilst my first instinct was to send this the way of the broken R2 Blade Runner DVD (i.e. back to the shop), I persevered and decided to keep the disc after all.

Specifically, then. My ecstasy at finding a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack on the DVD was short-lived because, despite Ry Cooder's beautiful stereo backing to the menus, the original soundtrack has NOT been remixed from the original recording. It looks like a quieter version of the existing soundtrack has merely been piped out of the rear speakers, drawing us a little bit further into the experience. HOWEVER, none of this even matters because the movie is unwatchable with the Dolby Digital soundtrack because the lipsync is completely broken.

Thankfully, there is a workaround: the Dolby Stereo soundtrack DOES lipsync correctly and hence redeems what would otherwise have been an outrageous, not to say extremely disappointing, fiasco. Luckily the only other significant flaw - a vertical yellow line at the left-hand side of the image during the opening desert scene - disappears after a few minutes. I assume this was a flaw in the print, although it seems odd that it couldn't have been corrected digitally. The strange green colour casts in several interior and night scenes looked odd at first, but the director's commentary explained that these were deliberate and I can only assume that the VHS release to which I'd gotten used had been colour-corrected to some degree.

I was disappointed to find no proper documentaries on the DVD, but the deleted scenes are interesting and the Wim Wenders commentary gives a great insight into the craft of 'proper' movie-making in a pre-digital world. It's also intriguing to discover that more than half of Paris, Texas, surely one of the greatest road movies, was actually written on the road during the shooting of the first half of the movie.

Disappointments aside, this is currently the best way to view this classic movie, in a 16:9 ratio and with passable (if resolutely monaural) sound. The extras add significant value to the package, in particular the director's commentary on both the movie itself and the deleted scenes. There aren't too many other extras, but for what is basically a low-budget independent movie we can count ourselves lucky that they found anything at all.

Haunting, Lyrical, Poetic...
These words do not even begin to describe this film.

It it one that stays with you, one that you think about long after it has finished.

The photography from Robby Muller is beautiful.

The music from Ry Cooder is perfect, and has spawned countless imitations.

The performances of Harry Dean Stanton, Natassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Hunter Carson and Aurore Clement are faultless.

The script, from Sam Shephard and L M Kit Carson, is a meandering journey through cities and landscapes and lives.

But above all, it is the faultless direction from Wim Wenders that makes this film so special. We find here a director at the height of his powers, creating a film specific in its time and place, yet universal in its resonance.

This film was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984. Watch it, and see why.