Germany/ France/ Australia I 1994 I English I 4K DCP (restored version) I Colour I 287 minutes I 1:1.66
Director: Wim Wenders
Screenplay: Wim Wenders, Peter Carey, after an idea by Wim Wenders, Solveig Dommartin
Script: Jacqueline Gamard
Producer: Anatole Dauman, Jonathan Taplin, Wim Wenders
Director of Photography: Robby Müller
Editor: Peter Przygodda
Music: U2, Talking Heads, Elvis Presley, Lou Reed, T-Bone Burnett, Peter Gabriel, Laurent Petigand, Can, Elvis Costello, R.E.M., Julee Cruise, Crime & The City Solution, Chubby Checker, Boulevard of Broken Dreams Orchestra, Robbie Robertson & Blue Nile, Depeche Mode, Patti & Fred Smith, Neneh Cherry, Daniel Lanois, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Jane Siberry with k.d. lang, Gondwanaland, David Darling, Mildred Hill and Patti Hill
Sound: Jean-Paul Mugel
Cast: Solveig Dommartin (Claire Tourneur), Pietro Falcone (Mario), Enzo Turrin (Doctor), Eddy Mitchell (Raymond Monnet), Adelle Lutz (Makiko), Sam Neill (Eugene Fitzpatrick), Max von Sydow (Henry Farber), Ernie Dingo (Burt), Rüdiger Vogler (Phillip Winter), Jeanne Moreau (Edith Farber), Chick Ortega (Chico Rémy), Ryu Chishy (Mr. Mori), William Hurt (Sam Farber alias Trevor McPhee)
UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD is “the ultimate road movie,” a journey around the globe, a modern- day odyssey - and it certainly bears similarities to Homer’s saga. However, the aim of this journey is the spiritual reconciliation between an obsessed father and his lost son – and, in UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD, Penelope decides to set out in pursuit of Odysseus.
In order to enable his blind wife (Jeanne Moreau) to see, Dr. Farber (Max von Sydow) invents a process that makes it possible to transmit the images recorded in the brain of sighted people directly into the visual system of blind people.
Farber’s son Sam (William Hurt) sets out on a journey around the world in order to “see” and record the various stations of his mother’s life for her. The French woman Margot (Solveig Dommartin) falls in love with him and sets out in pursuit of him. She in turn is followed by the author Eugene (Sam Neill), who is recording her adventure.
The film was shot in 1990 and takes place in what was then the near future, around the turn of the millennium. What most interests Wenders here is how humanity learns to deal with images - or becomes their victim. Eugene notes: “In the beginning was the word. What would happen if only the image remained in the end!?”
Frustrated with the “Reader’s Digest” version of his film, which was forced upon him by his distributors, Wenders created a director’s cut two years after the film’s release: At a length of almost four hours, it lives up to his intentions and to the epic nature of the story.
