Wim Wenders’ Lectures Explore the Poetic Power of Cinema

When the members of the Norton committee were trying to elect the 2018 Charles Eliot Norton Professors of Poetry, Wim Wenders was probably one of the first names they had in mind. It’s not because he is a poet in the traditional sense of the word. The German filmmaker, who is considered to be one of the most influential figures in New German Cinema, arrived to Sanders Theater in Cambridge to give two lectures on April 2 and 9. Perhaps more than his predecessors—American documentarist Frederick Wiseman and French filmmaker Agnès Varda, who gave lectures in February—Wenders delved into the meaning behind the title “Professor of Poetry.”

Titled “The Visible and the Invisible,” the first lecture raised crucial questions about the cinematic medium in an attempt to capture its elusive nature. “What is it that you remember from a film you loved? What do you treasure?” Wenders asked. “The real existence of a film is diffused and tricky. So what exactly is a film? How and where do films exist?” He answered his own question only in his conclusion, claiming that movies exist somewhere in the imaginary space between the viewer and the filmmaker. “We are talking about co-ownership,” Wenders said later. “You are the rightful owners of films you want to hold on to. We filmmakers can show you the invisible only if you are willing to lift the veil. In films, there is always a space for you to enter.” The lights went out and the lecture ended, oddly enough, with another poet. The late Leonard Cohen appeared on a screen behind Wenders, singing the famed lined of his “Anthem,” “There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.”

Wenders’ second lecture, “Poetry in Motion,” was centered around the poetic aspects of cinema. “Can poetry be expressed other than in words? Can images be poetic?” Wenders wondered at the beginning. The main focus of the lecture was Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, to whom Wenders referred as “my great filmmaking hero.” Ozu, according to Wenders, was a true cinematic poet, as he prioritized lyricism over storytelling, incorporating in his films long, pensive shots that were not necessary for the advancement of the plot.

“For a long while, Wenders believed that the drive to sustain narratives had a way of diminishing, indeed denigrating images,” Eric Rentschler, the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, said.

“Story became a form of vampire, sucking the blood of images to gain its life and substance,” Rentschler, who gave the introduction to one of Wenders’ lecture, added. On stage, Wenders himself called filmmakers to release themselves from “the tyranny of story.”

According to Rentschler, Wenders’ cinema was, in a sense, a counter reaction to the Nazi regime in Germany. “As a young German filmmaker, Wenders was painfully aware of how sights and sounds had enabled the Nazi media dictatorship, how films of the Hitler regime had fostered mass manipulation, world war, and mass murder,” Rentschler said. “For that reason, his generation, the generation of Fassbinder and Herzog and the New German Cinema, had an unceasing distrust of German sights and sounds.”

Surprisingly, Wenders did not conclude his lecture with a reference to “Wings of Desire,” his 1987 fantasy film which is considered to be his signature movie but was barely mentioned in the lectures. Instead, he chose to screen an excerpt from his 2011 3D documentary film “Pina,” about the contemporary German choreographer Pina Bausch. “Poetry in motion was happening in front of my camera,” he said, referring to the invention of three-dimensional film as the tool that enabled him to shoot the film and do justice to Bausch’s art.

“As a poet and as a lover of words, I thought the questions that Wenders asked in the beginning were a beautiful way to frame his presentation. It was incredibly refreshing and thought-provoking,” Dajon A. Thomas ’19 said after Wenders’ final lecture. “There are many filmmakers who provide experiences that are all too familiar and at times mechanical, but there are others who express themselves and create with an effortlessness that flows through our bodies and leaves a mark. I definitely think Wenders is one of those and it was great to hear him speak.”