Falsche Bewegung

1975, West Germany, directed by Wim Wenders (aka The Wrong Move)

Sandwiched between Alice in the Cities and Kings of the Road, this feels only nominally part of the same road trilogy. It abandons the surprisingly warm black and white of the other films for a damp and chilly colour, and despite the unifying presence of Rüdiger Vogler in all three films, it comes across as an entry from an entirely different filmography -- a Godard film shot across the border with Germany, with an array of literary allusions, strange narrative turns, and that flat affect that's so disconcerting across Godard's films, from Week End to Nouvelle vague. It's a considerably more difficult film as a consequence -- the characters are consciously opaque, struggling with profound questions about their own ennui as well as Germany's history, but with little of the humour that makes the companion films so instantly engaging.