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Directed by Wim Wenders

West Germany, Austria 1972 100 mins.

Goalkeeper Josef Bloch (Arthur Brauss) is sent off after committing a foul during an away game; a seemingly simple act that causes him to completely lose his bearings. He wanders aimlessly through an unfamiliar town, spends the night with the box-office attendant of a movie theater (Erika Pluhar), and strangles her the next morning. But instead of turning himself in or fleeing, Bloch then goes to the country place of his ex-girlfriend (Kai Fischer) and passively waits there for the police to come and arrest him. As Wenders himself has stated, the visual idiom of Alfred Hitchcock’s films provided the model for this, his debut film. Adhering minutely to the thoroughly “cinematic” source (a novel by Peter Handke) and working with cameraman Robby Müller and editor Peter Przygodda—both of whom had already worked with him on his thesis film at the HFF (University of Television and Film Munich)—Wenders’ first cinematic collaboration would weld his team together for years to come.