Paris, Texas

Wim Wenders made Paris, Texas in 1984, in collaboration with the playwright Sam Shepard (screenplay) and the photographer Robby Müller (cinematography). The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the BAFTA for Best Direction. It came at the end of Wenders's first major American period, alongside The State of Things and Hammett, and is widely considered his finest work in any language.

A man (silent, disheveled, nameless at first) emerges from the Texas-Mexico border desert and is identified as Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton, in his career performance). Travis has been missing for four years; his brother Walt drives him from Los Angeles back into Travis's life, including reuniting him with his young son Hunter, whom Walt and his French wife Anne have been raising. Travis and Hunter then drive to Houston in search of Travis's missing wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski). The peep-show booth scene in which Travis tells Jane the story of why he disappeared is one of the great extended monologues in cinema.

Müller's photography of the American Southwest, Ry Cooder's slide-guitar score (built around the Mexican folk song Cancion Mixteca), and Stanton's withdrawn, dignified central performance combine into a film that is somehow both a road movie and an American myth. Paris, Texas influenced everyone from Sofia Coppola to Kelly Reichardt.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: The most beautiful European film ever made about America, and Stanton's defining performance. The peep-show monologue alone justifies the canon.