[MOVIE]
Photo: Hanns Zischler in Summer in the City by Wim Wenders © 1971 HFF München. Courtesy of HFF München, Wim Wenders Stiftung
Sog., Scen.: Wim Wenders. F.: Robby Müller. M.: Peter Przygodda, Wim Wenders. Int.: Hanns Zischler (Hanns), Libgart Schwarz (Libgart), Edda Kéchl (Edda), Marie Bardischewski (Marie), Wim Wenders (l’uomo del biliardo), Gerd Stein (il gangster), Muriel Werner (un altro gangster), Helmut Farber (se stesso), Schrat (Cristian). Prod.: Wim Wenders per Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film. D.: 116’. Col.
The next film was my first feature, Summer in the City. It was a really low, low, low, low-budget film. We had 12,000 DM, which was $4,000- $5,000 at the time, and we made a two-and-a-half hour film out of it – 16mm, black-and-white, and original sound. And again with Hanns Zischler playing the lead … I have a part in it, too. I’m one of the friends Hanns meets in Munich: he plays billiards with me and asks what I’ve been doing for the last two years, and I tell him I’ve been to America. Actually, I got to New York for the first time when The Goalie’s Anxiety af the Penalty Kick was shown in the film festival there. The scene was more fiction than anything else… To me, now, Summer in the City is really a documentary about the end of the 1960s: it’s much more of a documentary than any of my other films. It is a fiction film, but its length, as well the black-and white photography, and the wide-angle lenses and the fixed shots make it more like a documentary: about the ideas people had in 1969 and 1970, the way people felt. An enormous disappointment: and a feeling, as in a dream, of being completely powerless: that’s what the film is about for me now. Not just powerless, but motionless; and emotionless. The only emotional contact the man achieves is the music which he listens to, having missed a lot in prison. The film is subtitled, “dedicated to the Kinks”, there are about six to seven Kinks songs in it. You even see them once in it, in a TV spot, when they sing Days. And, well, the Kinks are what is emotional or warm or whatever in the film. There’s one Lovin’ Spoonful song, too – the film is named after it, Summer in the City. All the songs deal with summer and heat and sun and whatever, and the film was shot in January, and it was freezing cold, and I decided afterwards never to shoot a film in winter again. But the film had definitely to be shot in winter. The whole film was more a longing for better times, or summer, or affection.
Wim Wenders, interviewed by Jan Dawson in Wim Wenders,
Zoetrope – Toronto Film Festival, New York – Toronto 1976
Courtesy of HFF München.
Restored in 2026 by Wim Wenders Stiftung in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from the original 16mm negative. Funding provided by Film Heritage Funding Program (FFE).
