Until the End of the World VHS

What a truly amazing and beautiful film. I bought the five plus hour Director's Cut (for $60 here!, but that's the lowest I could find anywhere) after seeing the shorter American release through Itunes, and really enjoyed seeing all the extra footage and missing scenes that Wenders was forced to snip in order to satisfy Hollywood. The shorter version does have its merits, namely being a tighter streamlined sci-fi story, but it left me confused and lost. The Wim Wenders approved Director's Cut is a whole other animal. Here I discovered many scenes and dialogue which filled in all the gaps of confusion. They're really two different films, and in the longer version one gets a clearer understanding of the nature of the love triangle between Claire, Gene and Sam. Secondary characters like Philip Winter, Chico and Mario, and David and Burt (the Aboriginals) are allowed time and space to breathe, making them come across more fully rounded and interesting -- they each have their own compelling stories which I would have liked to seen even further developed actually. The many subplots in the story are more fully explained than in the edited version and thus, more meaningful (some reviewers disagree and think there is already too much digression and not enough focus on the central characters, but this is Wender's great art experimentation and I think it should be viewed as such). And not any less importantly or interesting, the travel scenery is expanded. The main themes of over-reliance and personal obsession with technology couldn't be more prescient. I love how Wenders takes Claire, and us, from our watery origins (Venice), to the city (Tokyo), to earth (Australia), and finally, into outer space -- with several excursions, some more purposeful than others, in between. The amazing futuristic proto-I-pod dream reader that Dr. Farber creates is, symbolically, produced within a cave. Mankind's foundational womb and nest; artistic and creative beginnings, and end. Not only that, but the Aboriginal community they're hiding out with -- far away from the nuclear contamination that was (and is) a consequence of (American) military/technological man's arrogance -- are well represented as an entity in and of themselves by Wenders. Their traditional speech, way of life, music and culture are a fascinating counterpoint to the more "progressive" side of mankind.There's just so much in this movie that I for one would be very excited and interested in seeing Wender's intended nine hour version come to life. Yes, nine hours! In fact, I think I think I read somewhere that he intended more. And yes, the five hour version here does drag in places, but again, this is a film where I enjoy being able to space out for a bit and just enjoy the ride -- like taking a train across Europe and just looking out the window. Until the End of the World has a delightful and eclectic balance of drama, sci-fi, romance, travelogue and fun silliness to it like no other movie I can think of. I like that Wenders manages to infuse a little slapstick comedy and fun at just the precise moments when the film might become didactic or too serious. That said, I think it is a very profound movie. If the acting isn't always moving or convincing that's because I think this is at heart an experimental film with an unwieldy scope that might actually benefit from even more time, but most certainly, a tighter script. I do like it as it is, but one of my criticisms is that the writing and dialogue is superficial or vapid in some spots, and the actors therefore aren't always convincing, or "in" character. Claire is especially difficult I think because she's so ambiguous. On the one hand she's this superficial, depressed party-girl running from party to party to punish her chating boyfriend/lover, and then after a seemingly inconsequential encounter at a phone/video/"Facetime" booth with Sam, she's suddenly captivated enough by him to want to stock him around the world. But on the other, she's this complex human being with emotional needs and a desire to understand herself and what she wants, for after all, she's still a young woman who doesn't really know what she wants to do with her life or who she is. At times there seems to be some confusion as to how she's supposed to be played. Likewise with Sam Farber. So I think both Solveig Dommartin and William Hurt, both of whom I both like and dislike in these roles (leaning on the side of liking), could have benefited from even more space to develop their characters with more complexity. That said, Max Von Sydow is the perfect Henry Farber, Jeanne Moreau is beautiful in her role as Edith Farber, and both Ernie Dingo and David Gulpili are perfect in their roles. But now we're getting into War and Peace territory . . . and as it is, this Director's Cut is far and away superior to the commercial version which lacks crucial scenes and dialogue that take place between Claire and Gene, and Claire and Sam which adequately explain their individual personalities and self-interested motives. For example, in the shorter version it's near impossible to understand why the hell Claire is partying solo in Venice to begin with, or why Gene would continue to follow her after she's left him (it's because Gene had cheated on her with her best friend Makiko but still loves her and is writing his story, this story, about her), or why in the hell Gene would manage to get along with Sam later on. It's weird, I know, but the funny thing is that truth is often stranger than fiction and these kinds of odd trysts and emotional attachments (in the movie, it's all about obsession and personal interests), as most of us know from experience, are indicative of the awkward realities we sometimes find ourselves enmeshed in without knowing how we got there in the first place. Wenders shows all this "nuclear fallout" as stemming from the nature of our twisted dreams and our incapacity, and unwillingness, to confront them.Wow, I don't know where to start or end with this epic film! You'll just have to find this longer version for yourself, which by the way, works very nicely on the used $20 Philips DVP 5990 DVD player I found at Goodwill (find instructions on internet for how to easily unlock region coding), because unfortunately, it is STILL!? unavailable in the good old US of A, nor are there any independent movie theaters out there that seem willing to show it -- very, very sad but who knows, maybe one day it'll happen close to you. I for one would just love to see this on the big screen with an appreciative audience. I'm so happy to have finally discovered this movie and am glad I purchased this German 3-DVD set. It plays in English and there are some out-takes too, possibly scenes from Wender's original nine-hour plan, but also some amusing little bloopers.Lastly, did I mention the amazing soundtrack? Absolutely way ahead of its time and one of the best, with pop music, of any film I've ever seen. There's some confusion from older comments here surrounding Peter Gabriel's Blood of Eden track and the airplane descent scene. In the shorter, commercial version the track begins earlier, I think, and some people think it's missing altogether from the longer version. Not true at all! In fact, virtually all of the song -- all five or six minutes of it -- is played here. Same with many of the other tracks throughout the movie. Not only that, Wenders chooses to give us a few eerie moments of hearing nothing but the wind as the plane slowly glides down into the Australian desert just before softly introducing the ecstasy of Gabriel's Blood Eden. It's far more delicate and smooth than the shorter version in which many pieces of the ensuing, iconic desert trek are also cut out.

This film, Until the End of the World (UTTEOTW), has long been called the ultimate road movie or even the greatest road movie ever made. Sometimes when I read stuff like that I cringe and think that this film is far greater than that and calling it a road movie does it a sort of disservice. I've watched this film probably hundreds of times (hate to admit) and in every different format available and have weighed this film, measured this film and only found myself wanting to see it again.Sure, the film spans 15 cities and 7 different countries and has more story arcs than Los Angeles has McDonalds but the more I watch the film the more I feel that this is less of a road movie and more of a biopic of the fictitious would-be scientist, Sam Faber and his over-bearing family.I feel that UTTEOTW is a much greater contribution to modern film then most are willing to admit and could quite possibly be one of the greatest films ever made. This film has the same kind of public ground swell audience that Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and Blade Runner have. All these movies preformed badly in the box office but are seen as some of best cinema that man or woman has been able to bring forward.UTTEOTW has been seen by many to be a failure of sorts because of the immense runtime and the resolution set in Australia that is almost an entire third of the film, in all versions. It seems, historically now, that the studio execs thought that it would be inappropriate to subject any audience to five hours of film and that the American audience was too daft and wouldn't buy the whole concept, thus kicking off the mess that the film has gone through for almost twenty years now. Yes, it has been almost that long now.The film in different edits, according to lore, has gone from a 20 hour version, that Wim Wenders had vehemently held position on for almost six months before acquiescing to releasing a `meager' 8 hour version and then later produced a 5 hour version. He was horrified when the studio forced a 151 minute version that he looks back at in complete disdain and refers to as the `Readers Digest version' and has stated that it is `unwatchable'. I don't know about the 8 and 20 hour version and which is better, because I and many others have not seen it, but I have seen the 5 hour version many times and now look at it as vastly superior (in presentation) to the theatrical release, but the theatrical release is far from unwatchable and is actually the version that the majority of the audience is familiar with and enjoy.Wenders suffers from the same ills as Ridley Scott does, as he sees his films his way and not the way the world sees them, and that's perfectly fine. Ridley Scott doesn't like the Harrison Ford `Philip Marlowe' narration while an immense group of the fans loved it, myself included. Wenders doesn't like the theatrical release while most of the world is awed by it.So, when the audience did see this film, it was the beginning of a new decade and Wenders, like Werner Herzog or David Lynch, had built up a core audience of supporters worldwide that appreciated his films for storytelling, the movement and the sheer reverence that seemed to manifest on screen. UTTEOTW came out at probably the very beginning of the emergence of the modern independent film movement that has now firmly taken over the industry. Even though they had budgeted $23 Million dollars for production, a lot of the funds came because of the acclaim given to Wings of Desire again with Solveig Dommartin, but the money didn't necessarily make this film the typical large-budget studio film that others were producing around the same time for the same funds when this came out. A quick search of movies released in 1991 shows an abysmal year aside from Jonathan Demme's masterpiece `Silence of the Lambs'.This movie is undoubtedly Wenders greatest work, and I have watched every film he's put out - before and since. Sometimes I see glimpses of this film in his other works and can tell that this film's reception in the world still weighs heavily on his mind. Like Al Gore, he's traveled the globe giving lectures with his film and has his own ideas about its impact and what more can be done. It seems that some of the legal battles may never go away, specifically the ones that are associated with Warner Brothers.Recently, a Region 2 PAL version was released into the market, and when I watched it I could tell it probably didn't have the stamp of approval from WB. The quality shows it to be almost a straight VHS transfer from a low-end computer system which puts a lot of visual noise on the screen and in the audio. Some people who have purchased this version have complained, but really I don't see anything wrong with it as it's just a full-frame DVD that will suffice for now for those looking for the 158 min on DVD.My recommendation when it comes to versions is to purchase the 3 Disc Director's Cut set from Amazon.co.uk and just live with the fact that the first fifteen minutes of dialogue that's had with Solveig and Chico are in French with no subtitles. If you watch the film you can pretty much get the gist of what's being said anyways, Chico needs more beer, he likes the Beatles, sex and Solveig tells you how much you can buy a goat for in Ethiopia.I had read in January of 2007 that Solveig had died of heart failure and was deeply saddened as I found her to be an incredibly unique talent and hypnotizing to see on the big screen. I would have loved to have seen her star in a few more films and even break back into the American marketplace. What a shame she's now gone, she'll be missed for sure.I've put a list of all the different versions below, that are available and that I own, so you could get an idea of what's going on with this movie and its debacle of a distribution:1991 VHS Tape Theatrical Release 158 mins1991 R2 Samsung Japanese Laserdisc 179 mins2004 PAL R2 Italian 3 Disc Set 280 mins2004 PAL R2 UK 3 Disc Set Director's Cut 280 mins2007 PAL R2 UK 1 Disc VHS Transfer 158 minsRegarding the last release, I recently discovered that the difference in the run-time is due to PAL speed-up adjusting it 4%, from 158 mins to 151 mins.For those in America interested in seeing these films but are worried about the DVD Regions / PAL difference. Don't fret because there are some very easy ways to set your DVD player to Region 0 which will make your player Region free and you can watch all movies from around the world. Videohelp dot com has most players remote codes which will help you easily make the adjustment. I've changed all my players this way and have been happy ever since....

It arrived one day before the estimated arrival time, for my great surprise and joy! I've been looking for that Wim Wenders' masterpiece in DVD and it was not easy to find outside Amazon. The 3-DVD box set is in a marvelous hard-paper designed box, excel printed, there is also a small booklet included with a brief explanation about the film production, signed by the director himself and the director's filmography released in DVD editions. That great 3-DVD box set is also the DIRECTOR'S CUT edition dated 2005, so I consider it a "must have" edition for Wim Wenders collectors! The DVD film quality is fantastic, the sound is really stereo and I could feel the surround sound effect(I've watched it on an ordinary LED TV-Monitor with 2 small speakers plugged in)and the soundtrack is a reunion of top singers and music players. Important note: it is a German edition, so everything is written in German, there is only subtitles in German. I was a little bit disappointed because I thought it would have subtitles in other languages too, like French or English. The language of the film is both English and French or dubbed in German. There are scenes in French too, so you shall know a little bit of French to have a better comprehension of the film story... The total time of the film trilogy is about 279 min. Screen format 1,78:1(anamorph) DVD region 2/8 color system PAL (you must have a DVD player able to play all regions with double NTSC / PAL color system). The extras are: trailer, cut scenes, Wim Wenders interviewed by Roger Willemsen and Wim Wenders' biography. The film was released in 1991.I am really happy with my Until the End of World Director's Cut 3-DVD Box Set and I recommend it if you are a Wim Wenders Fan!

This reputedly "cinematic marvel" is here released in a Director's Cut which is almost twice as long as some released prints but still far shorter than the original 20 hour version. I purchased it for only £22 thank goodness, as we both went to sleep in the first third but still didn't lose understanding of the picaresque rambling story. Wenders' film-making is a "marmite" affair. Many adore it but I fear we will not be investing any more time viewing parts two and three. Life is too short. Still his vision of the future is prescient in many ways and the leading actors are charismatic - but it does outstay its welcome as far as we are concerned and the "comic" moments are really dreadfully "clunky" !

Love this weird road movie but this DVD is watchable at best. VERY happy to finally have a copy on DVD even though it's PAL and not NTSC (that's what we have here in the states). This at least blows away the VHS and Laserdisc I have. Just was hoping to have better resolution (just looks 'old') and better sound (2 channel just doesn't cut it these days). Why is there no subtitles when speaking foreign language? Being a UK DVD I would think it would have been subtitled for foreign market.Still wanting to get the longer version that's out there because I hear it's much better transfer Until the End of the World (Bis ans Ende der Welt) [DVD ] even though that too is not subtitled.This masterpiece deserves better treatment than what it has been handed (it's not even on DVD in the states!) and cries out for a hi-def restoration with Wim Wenders approval with plenty of extras. Here in the states Criterion released a few of Wenders' movies (Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas) on beautiful blu ray (region A) with great commentary from the great director himself...unfortunately UNTIL THE END is not one of them (even though Warner Bros. still own the film). Maybe someday soon someone will wake up and re-release this film the way it needs to be seen!!All in all, I would get another version of this film than this one Until The End Of The World (DVD) [1992 ]. Until the End of the World (Bis ans Ende der Welt) [DVDUntil The End Of The World (DVD) [1992

This film, Until the End of the World (UTTEOTW), has long been called the ultimate road movie or even the greatest road movie ever made. Sometimes when I read stuff like that I cringe and think that this film is far greater than that and calling it a road movie does it a sort of disservice. I've watched this film probably hundreds of times (hate to admit) and in every different format available and have weighed this film, measured this film and only found myself wanting to see it again.Sure, the film spans 15 cities and 7 different countries and has more story arcs than Los Angeles has McDonalds but the more I watch the film the more I feel that this is less of a road movie and more of a biopic of the fictitious would-be scientist, Sam Faber and his over-bearing family.I feel that UTTEOTW is a much greater contribution to modern film then most are willing to admit and could quite possibly be one of the greatest films ever made. This film has the same kind of public ground swell audience that Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and Blade Runner have. All these movies preformed badly in the box office but are seen as some of best cinema that man or woman has been able to bring forward.UTTEOTW has been seen by many to be a failure of sorts because of the immense runtime and the resolution set in Australia that is almost an entire third of the film, in all versions. It seems, historically now, that the studio execs thought that it would be inappropriate to subject any audience to five hours of film and that the American audience was too daft and wouldn't buy the whole concept, thus kicking off the mess that the film has gone through for almost twenty years now. Yes, it has been almost that long now.The film in different edits, according to lore, has gone from a 20 hour version, that Wim Wenders had vehemently held position on for almost six months before acquiescing to releasing a `meager' 8 hour version and then later produced a 5 hour version. He was horrified when the studio forced a 151 minute version that he looks back at in complete disdain and refers to as the `Readers Digest version' and has stated that it is `unwatchable'. I don't know about the 8 and 20 hour version and which is better, because I and many others have not seen it, but I have seen the 5 hour version many times and now look at it as vastly superior (in presentation) to the theatrical release, but the theatrical release is far from unwatchable and is actually the version that the majority of the audience is familiar with and enjoy.Wenders suffers from the same ills as Ridley Scott does, as he sees his films his way and not the way the world sees them, and that's perfectly fine. Ridley Scott doesn't like the Harrison Ford `Philip Marlowe' narration while an immense group of the fans loved it, myself included. Wenders doesn't like the theatrical release while most of the world is awed by it.So, when the audience did see this film, it was the beginning of a new decade and Wenders, like Werner Herzog or David Lynch, had built up a core audience of supporters worldwide that appreciated his films for storytelling, the movement and the sheer reverence that seemed to manifest on screen. UTTEOTW came out at probably the very beginning of the emergence of the modern independent film movement that has now firmly taken over the industry. Even though they had budgeted $23 Million dollars for production, a lot of the funds came because of the acclaim given to Wings of Desire again with Solveig Dommartin, but the money didn't necessarily make this film the typical large-budget studio film that others were producing around the same time for the same funds when this came out. A quick search of movies released in 1991 shows an abysmal year aside from Jonathan Demme's masterpiece `Silence of the Lambs'.This movie is undoubtedly Wenders greatest work, and I have watched every film he's put out - before and since. Sometimes I see glimpses of this film in his other works and can tell that this film's reception in the world still weighs heavily on his mind. Like Al Gore, he's traveled the globe giving lectures with his film and has his own ideas about its impact and what more can be done. It seems that some of the legal battles may never go away, specifically the ones that are associated with Warner Brothers.Recently, a Region 2 PAL version was released into the market, and when I watched it I could tell it probably didn't have the stamp of approval from WB. The quality shows it to be almost a straight VHS transfer from a low-end computer system which puts a lot of visual noise on the screen and in the audio. Some people who have purchased this version have complained, but really I don't see anything wrong with it as it's just a full-frame DVD that will suffice for now for those looking for the 158 min on DVD.My recommendation when it comes to versions is to purchase the 3 Disc Director's Cut set from Amazon.co.uk and just live with the fact that the first fifteen minutes of dialogue that's had with Solveig and Chico are in French with no subtitles. If you watch the film you can pretty much get the gist of what's being said anyways, Chico needs more beer, he likes the Beatles, sex and Solveig tells you how much you can buy a goat for in Ethiopia.I had read in January of 2007 that Solveig had died of heart failure and was deeply saddened as I found her to be an incredibly unique talent and hypnotizing to see on the big screen. I would have loved to have seen her star in a few more films and even break back into the American marketplace. What a shame she's now gone, she'll be missed for sure.I've put a list of all the different versions below, that are available and that I own, so you could get an idea of what's going on with this movie and its debacle of a distribution:1991 VHS Tape Theatrical Release 158 mins1991 R2 Samsung Japanese Laserdisc 179 mins2004 PAL R2 Italian 3 Disc Set 280 mins2004 PAL R2 UK 3 Disc Set Director's Cut 280 mins2007 PAL R2 UK 1 Disc VHS Transfer 158 minsRegarding the last release, I recently discovered that the difference in the run-time is due to PAL speed-up adjusting it 4%, from 158 mins to 151 mins.For those in interested in seeing these films but are worried about the DVD Regions / PAL difference. Don't fret because there are some very easy ways to set your DVD player to Region 0 which will make your player Region free and you can watch all movies from around the world. Videohelp dot com has most players remote codes which will help you easily make the adjustment. I've changed all my players this way and have been happy ever since....

This movie hasn't really dated and has a whole set of good music on the soundtrack including U2 and Talking Heads amongst others. He correctly predicted people being glued to miniature electronic screens and worried about their batteries running out before Apple had produced anything like this. Doesn't time fly.....

At its core, this is a film about the sometimes-destructive nature of obsession - the central character's obsession with the object of her desire, her former lover's obsession with quantifying their relationship, the obsession of bounty hunters with their quarry, the obsession of a son's desperate hope for his father's approval and that father's obsession with cutting-edge science taking precedence over any interpersonal considerations - with the exception of his obsessive love for his wife. This film is an epic, dream-like study of the human cost of all-consuming passion.It's also a lot of fun. Wim Wenders was smart enough to place the timeline of events in this film no more than ten years on from shooting, thus taking advantage of newly-emergent technology showcased in ingenious ways as well as avoiding the dated look that plagues many science fiction films a decade or two after their release.The soundtrack is amazing. I have personally worn-out or loaned-out seven separate cds and cassettes. It has been the soundtrack of my life for the better part of 15 years.I should add that this film resembles a lucid dream state, one of those dreams you awaken from and attempt to describe ("...Well, then I was in Australia, and there were these guys chasing me so I got in a plane and then I was in a laboratory, except it was in a cave...")This film begins with a dream and it ends with several recovering dream addicts adrift on a planet which appears to be recovering from a nightmare, a nightmare they seemed to have missed entirely in the all-encompassing pursuit of their heart's desires.