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Perfect Days 2
Dec. 9th, 2025 08:27 am Perfect Days was showing at the Towner a few months back. People who'd seen it were going on about how wonderful it was. Oddly enough none of them mentioned that it was directed by Wim Wenders.
Back in the day we cineastes used to talk in terms of directors. Stars and screenwriters were secondary. The director was the man (he generally was a man)- and as much in control of the work as a novelist is of their novel. We went to see a movie because it was a Bergman movie or an Antonioni movie or- even- a Wim Wenders movie. These guys were auteurs- you knew when you went to see one of their films that you were entering a certain kind of world, that a certain kind of imagination was at play. You loved 'em, you felt an affinity- or you felt a distaste. I gave up going to Polanski's stuff because it radiated negativity. I became a Bergman completist even though, objectively speaking, some of his films were crap.
Wenders is one of the last of the old style European auteurs. And Perfect Days is one of the last of the old style auteur movies. You can see, feel, intuit that it comes from the mind that gave us Alice in the Cities way back in 1974. It was made under auteur conditions too- for very little money, with a shooting schedule (which it stuck to) of a mere 16 days, and without studio interference.
Contemporary cinema interests me very little. Maybe I'm just old. Or maybe the golden age is over and what we're being fed is silver at best. Still, if Wenders (who is 80) manages to make another movie I'll be wanting to track it down......
Back in the day we cineastes used to talk in terms of directors. Stars and screenwriters were secondary. The director was the man (he generally was a man)- and as much in control of the work as a novelist is of their novel. We went to see a movie because it was a Bergman movie or an Antonioni movie or- even- a Wim Wenders movie. These guys were auteurs- you knew when you went to see one of their films that you were entering a certain kind of world, that a certain kind of imagination was at play. You loved 'em, you felt an affinity- or you felt a distaste. I gave up going to Polanski's stuff because it radiated negativity. I became a Bergman completist even though, objectively speaking, some of his films were crap.
Wenders is one of the last of the old style European auteurs. And Perfect Days is one of the last of the old style auteur movies. You can see, feel, intuit that it comes from the mind that gave us Alice in the Cities way back in 1974. It was made under auteur conditions too- for very little money, with a shooting schedule (which it stuck to) of a mere 16 days, and without studio interference.
Contemporary cinema interests me very little. Maybe I'm just old. Or maybe the golden age is over and what we're being fed is silver at best. Still, if Wenders (who is 80) manages to make another movie I'll be wanting to track it down......
