Soundtrack Saturday

In Wim Wenders 1984 film Paris, Texas, Harry Dean Stanton wanders around the West Texas desert, disheveled and bewildered. He collapses in a convenience store and via his wallet he is identified as Travis Henderson. Travis' brother in Los Angeles is contacted and he comes and picks him up. He had not heard from Travis for four years and believed him to be dead. Gradually, the story unfolds. Travis is re- united with his son and then goes to Houston to look for Jane, Hunter's mother and Travis' ex (Nastassja Kinsky), who it turns out is working in a peep show club. 

Paris, Texas is a very visual film. Harry Dean Stanton's face and baseball cap. The desert. Nastassja's blonde hair and bright pink jumper. The sunsets over L.A. Billboards and shop fronts. But it's also very much defined by its soundtrack, Ry Cooder's music, the Tex- Mex songs, the dialogue included in the soundtrack including the famous eight minute long 'I knew these people...' speech (and the point at which after Travis has talked to Jane on the phone at the peep show club for several minutes, Jane sighs, 'yep, I know that feeling', sampled by Andrew Weatherall on Screamadelica as the endnote of I''m Coming Down. I knew these people... was also sampled by The Orb and others). 

As an album Ry Cooder's songs and score work on their own. Listening to it makes one want to watch the film again of course- never a bad thing. Ry Cooder's playing- slide guitar, Tex Mex blues, finger picking, reverb- is perfect, evoking Travis and Jane's loss and melancholy, and the vast emptiness of the desert. Wenders placed ambient microphones to pick up the sound of the desert and the wind. Cooder discovered the desert wind is in E- flat so he tuned all the instruments to that note, Cooder's guitar pitched to the key of the wind. 

Paris, Texas  

Cancion Mixteca is a Mexican folk song, written by Jose Lopez Alvarez between 1912 and 1915. It has become the song for many Mexicans who have left their homeland, a song of homesickness. In the film and on the soundtrack Harry Dean Stanton sings it, with Cooder on guitar and piano. 

'So far am I from the land where I was born!
Immense nostalgia invades my thoughts,
and, to see myself, as lone and dismal as leaf on the wind,
I would that I'd weep ‒ I would that I'd die ‒ out of sorrow!

O land of sunshine! I sigh for‐to see you.
Now that, far from you, I live without light ‒ without love.
And, to see myself, as lone and dismal as leaf on the wind,
I would that I'd weep ‒ I would that I'd die ‒ out of sorrow!'

Cancion Mixteca

And here's the monologue. It's not a Paris, Texas post without it. 

I Knew These People 

Soundtrack Saturday

I watched Wings Of Desire over the Christmas holiday- it was on one of the many Channel 4 channels having been remastered and restored in 2022. It's a film I haven't seen since it came out in 1989 and am pretty sure I've only seen once before (probably at Liverpool University film club which had a long running mid- week film night I used to go to in '88 and '89). 

Wings Of Desire was made by Wim Wenders, a mark of quality in itself, and is set in West Berlin in 1989 (the events of November 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent break up of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR don't appear in the film at all, no hint of a major shift in geo- politics. The Berlin Wall does feature in the film and West Berlin's unique feel and status are undeniably an important aspect of the film. Interestingly, much of West Berlin is semi- derelict with shots of vast areas of waste ground in what is now central Berlin, Potsdammerplatz for example). The film is in German mainly, subtitled, with brief bits of conversation in English (especially when Columbo, Peter Falk, features). It's shot mainly in beautiful black and white with some scenes in equally beautiful colour. Wenders cinematography and eye for a shot is second to none. It's also very slow, especially by modern cinema's standards, a film that feels like for long periods nothing much happens, the main characters drift around a lot, contemplating and deliberating. 

The film centres of two angels, one played by Bruno Ganz (best known to British audiences for his portrayal of Hitler in Downfall), who populate West Berlin and are invisible to adults but can be seen by children, listening to the thoughts of West Berliners, occasionally intervening to comfort humans in distress, sometimes failing to prevent people from spiraling. Many of the people in the film seem to be alone, estranged from family and friends, everyone isolated in a city isolated from the rest of the country. A circus is in town and the angel Bruno Ganz plays falls in love with the trapeze artist, a woman played by Solveig Dommartin, and wants to become mortal so he can feel human pleasures. A film about the Second World War is being filmed, starring Peter Falk, who knows the angels are there even though he can't see them. At times, shots of Berlin from 1945 newsreel are cut into the film. The black and white scenes, including some shot inside the enormous modernist West Berlin library and some sot near the Wall, are the world as seen by the angels. The colour scenes are the world as seen by humans.  I'll leave my plot synopsis there- no spoilers.

The soundtrack is mainly by Jurgen Knieper who wrote much of the score and then re- wrote much of it having been shown rushes by Wenders. It's an ambient/ instrumental score with found sounds and dialogue from the film which works well as a standalone. This is Der Himmel Uber Berlin (The Sky Above Berlin), a haunting and rather lovely five minutes which sounds exactly like the soundtrack to angels on the rooftops of buildings at the frontline of The Cold War should sound. 

Wim Wenders said he couldn't make a film in West Berlin in the late 80s and not include Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. The Bad Seeds appear in colour and in black and white, the characters turning up at a gig in a dilapidated dancehall. In this scene (in colour) Bruno Ganz arrives at the club while Nick and the boys play The Carny. Solveig is on the crowd too. Then they play From Her To Eternity, throbbing, restless, junkyard blues, young Nick Cave at the stage's lip in full heroin preacher mode playing to West Berlin's goth/ punk/ alternative underworld. Otto Sander, another angel, appears on stage. 

Bad Seed guitarist Rowland S. Howard had a second band, Crime And The City Solution. They also appear in Wings Of Desire, playing the ominous Six Bells Chime, a sort of West Berlin/ Weimar Spaghetti Western song. Roland spins round the stage wielding guitar and cigarette. Solveig dances, The angels listen in. 

The soundtrack features both bands with nine Jurgen Knieper pieces of music, snippets of conversation and dialogue from the film (just as the soundtrack to Wender's Paris, Texas did), plus several other pieces of music (expanded on CD), a soundtrack works really well away from the film as well as part of it. Both film and soundtrack are moving, atmospheric and have something to say about the human condition. What more could you want?

Canción Mixteca

Playing around with the Harry Dean Stanton monologue from Paris, Texas when I was putting yesterday's Isolation Mix together last week caused me to play the entire soundtrack through a few times. It's not a very long album, only ten tracks and if it wasn't for 'I Knew These People...' which clocks in at over eight minutes it would be much shorter. Ry Cooder's guitar playing, all slide guitar, delicate finger picking, reverb and atmosphere, perfectly matches the moods and look of the film- the dust of the desert, the longing of the characters, the melancholy and loss of Travis and Jane. Ry Cooder said in 2018 that director Wim Wenders caught the ambience of the south west of the USA with the use of ambient microphones which picked up the sound of the desert and the wind, which he discovered is in E♭. So for the soundtrack they tuned all the instruments to E♭. That's the kind of detail I like, tuning your guitar to the key of the wind.

This song, Canción Mixteca, is ne of the highlights of the soundtrack and is little more than Ry Cooder's echo laden guitar, some piano and Harry Dean Stanton singing. The song is a Mexican folk song, written between 1912 and 1915 by Jose Lopez Alvarez. He wrote it in Mexico City suffering from homesickness for Oaxaca, his home. Since then it has been adopted by many Mexican exiles who long for their hometown.

'So far am I from the land where I was born!
Immense nostalgia invades my thoughts,
and, to see myself, as lone and dismal as leaf on the wind,
I would that I'd weep ‒ I would that I'd die ‒ out of sorrow!

O land of sunshine! I sigh for‐to see you.
Now that, far from you, I live without light ‒ without love.
And, to see myself, as lone and dismal as leaf on the wind,
I would that I'd weep ‒ I would that I'd die ‒ out of sorrow!'

Canción Mixteca