KINGS OF THE ROAD (1976) - Wim Wenders' "Road Trilogy" Thursdays
Schedule
Thu Mar 27 2025 at 07:00 pm to 10:00 pm
UTC-07:00Location
Philosophical Research Society | Los Angeles, CA
About this Event
WIM WENDERS’ ROAD TRILOGY
Before Paris, Texas, before Wings of Desire, in the 1970s Wim Wenders was among the first true international breakthrough artists of the revolutionary New German Cinema movement, a filmmaker whose fascination with the physical landscapes and emotional contours of the open road proved to be universal. In the middle of that decade, Wenders embarked on a three-film journey that took him from the wide roads of Germany to the endless highways of the United States and back again. Each starring Rüdiger Vogler as the director’s alter ego, Alice in the Cities, Wrong Move, and Kings of the Road are dramas of emotional transformation that follow their characters’ searches for themselves, all rendered with uncommon soulfulness and visual poetry.
On Thursdays this March, The Philosophical Research Society’s 7th House Screenings is proud to present Wenders’ earliest odes to that human desire to get behind the wheel and search for oneself, somewhere out there, beyond the horizon.
Thursday, 3/13, 7:00pm – Alice in the Cities (1974)
Thursday, 3/20, 7:00pm – Wrong Move (1975)
Thursday, 3/27, 7:00 – Kings of the Road (1976)
KINGS OF THE ROAD
The third film in Wenders’ “Road Trilogy”, is about a friendship between two men: Bruno, a.k.a. King of the Road (Rüdiger Vogler), who repairs film projectors and travels along the inner German border in his truck, and the psychologist Robert, a.k.a. Kamikaze (Hanns Zischler), who is fleeing from his own past. When Robert drives his old Volkswagen straight into the Elbe River, he is fished out by Bruno. This is the beginning of their shared journey through a German no-man’s-land, a journey that leads them from the Lüneburg Heath to the Bavarian Forest – traveling from one rural German movie theater to another. Along the way, the two men bond over their shared loneliness.
Wenders began the film without a script. Instead, there was a route that he had scouted out beforehand: through all of the little towns along the Wall that still contained a movie theater in this era of cinematic mass extinction. The old moving van with the film projectors in the back becomes a metaphor for the history of film—it is no coincidence that the film is dedicated to Fritz Lang. This “men’s story” also treats the themes of the absence of women, of loneliness, and of postwar Germany. At one point, Bruno says to Robert: “The Yankees have colonized our subconscious.”
Captured in gorgeous compositions by cinematographer Robby Müller and dedicated to Fritz Lang, Kings of the Road is a love letter to the cinema, a moving and funny tale of male friendship, and a portrait of a country still haunted by war.
Dir. Wim Wenders, 1976, 176min, Germany, German w/ English Subtitles, Unrated (ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY), Digital.
Content Advisory: Please note this film contains content suitable only for adults. No persons under 18 years of age permitted.
Text courtesy of Janus Films/Criterion Collection.
Special thanks to Sam Dinerstein of Janus Films.
Tickets: $10 (In Person Only Event)
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Where is it happening?
Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard, Los Angeles, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 12.51
