“The Yanks have colonized our subconscious"
Bruno (Rudiger Vogler) is a Cinema projector repair man who
travels from town to town along the West and East German border repairing old
cinema projectors. One day while shaving by the side of a road, a man drives
his car at high speed into a lake, gets out and walks over to Bruno. Bruno, not
knowing what else to do laughs at the man and offers him some clean clothes.
The man, Robert (Hanns Zischler) hitchhikes with Bruno from town to town
beginning a strange and often uneasy friendship.
The film has several themes which jump out at you and are
present throughout. The first is a love of cinema and anger at what has become
of the small German cinema. Most of the cinemas that Bruno visits are either
badly run, have been turned into porn theatres or are closed altogether. This
is director Wim Wenders way of showing viewers what is happening to small cinemas.
It is a problem which over thirty years later is still present in my own
country. Occasionally Bruno will come across a small, old theatre run by an ex
Nazi that is run with care and dedication. A place where old, noisy machines
are used by artisan projectionists to show the great classics of the 50s and
60s but generally he deals with people who have no interest in film or it’s
proper projection. This film is very much a love letter to film.
