Wenders Travels with Ozu

The positioning of Wim Wenders as a filmmaker indebted to Ozu Yasujiro is not a new one. He has expressed his admiration for Ozu’s work on several occasions, in both his own critical writings and on film. But just what Wenders has taken from Ozu, and what that might mean for an understanding of a “traveling” film practice like that of Wenders, has yet to be explored in any real depth. This chapter pays close attention to four feature films, two for each director. The formal correspondences manifest themselves not in terms of style but at structural and dramaturgical levels, in a shared strategy of repeating, doubling, or twinning, and especially so for what the chapter calls the double climactic monologue. Examining Wenders’s borrowings and conversions from Ozu illuminates otherwise hidden corners for both artists and shows the benefits of a reflective form of intercultural analysis.