The Wanderlust of Wim Wenders: The Tracking Shot in the “Road Trilogy”

During the 1970s, German filmmaker Wim Wenders directed Alice in the Cities (1974), Wrong Move (1975) and Kings of the Road (1976), all of which collectively came to be known as the "Road trilogy", although they were not originally intended or planned as such. In this article, I explore the ways in which Wenders’s road trilogy visually articulates the experiential act of wandering by specifically focusing on the aesthetics of camera placement and movement. Through a close and comparative analysis of sequences involving mobility and motion, I argue that Wenders gradually dissociates wandering from thinking and awakening, which runs contrary to previously held convictions particularly prevalent in European Romantic philosophy—that wandering by nature broadens horizons and enriches perspectives. Wenders’s road trilogy can in fact be read against the grain of the conventions of the road movie: the journeys of self-discovery in the American tradition are replaced with passivity and disengagement.