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A welcome new print of Wim Wenders’ fourth feature, a 1974 road flick memorably shot in monochrome by the director’s frequent lenser Robby Muller. The alienated protagonist Winter (Rudiger Vogeler) returns from a fruitless writing assignment in the States to his native West Germany. There, he finds himself looking after precocious nine-year-old Alice (Yella Rottlander), whose grandmother the unlikely duo attempt to find. Unfolding at its own leisurely pace, the open-ended, episodic story mirrors Wenders’ trademark ambivalence towards American culture: check out Winter’s reaction to an ad-break-sullied TV broadcast of John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln. It’s an unsentimental and drily amusing film, astutely exploring how the creation and consumption of images shapes our identities.
