The Wrong Move

Aiming to be a writer, Wilhelm leaves his mother and girlfriend in his home town of Glückstadt in the flat far north of Germany and sets out for Bonn. Changing trains at Hamburg, he notices a beautiful actress, Therese, and obtains her phone number. In his compartment are an older man, Laertes, who sometimes communicates by playing a harmonica, and a teen acrobat, Mignon, who appears to be mute. The pair have no money, so Wilhelm pays their fare and puts them up in his cheap hotel, where Therese joins them. Bernhard, an awkward Austrian who wants to be a poet, befriends the four. He says he has a rich uncle with a castle on a peak overlooking the Rhine, but when the five turn up it is the wrong place. Despite their error the owner welcomes them, because their arrival prevented him shooting himself; he says they can stay as long as they like.

However, tensions grow, for Wilhelm is not giving Therese the affection she wants, while Mignon signals her availability to him. Laertes disgusts Wilhelm by revealing his role in the Holocaust and his feeling guilt but not repentance. The owner of the castle then hangs himself, upon which the five leave hastily. Bernhard goes off alone, while Therese takes the other three to her small flat in Frankfurt, where the tensions grow worse. Leaving on his own, Wilhelm completes his symbolic journey by reaching one of the most southerly, highest and emptiest points in Germany, the summit of the Zugspitze.

{{castlist|

• Rüdiger Vogler as Wilhelm Meister
• Hans Christian Blech as Laertes
• Hanna Schygulla as Therese Farner
• Nastassja Kinski as Mignon (credited as Nastassja Nakszynski)
• Peter Kern as Bernhard Landau
• Ivan Desny as Schloss (manor house) owner
• Marianne Hoppe as Wilhelm's mother
• Lisa Kreuzer as Janine, Wilhelm's girl friend

}}

File:Peter Handke.jpg adapted Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship for Wrong Move, marking his second collaboration with director Wim Wenders.]]

According to Wenders, although Wrong Move is based on Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, screenwriter Peter Handke did not use any of the book's dialogue and incorporated a minimal amount of its action, mainly borrowing its concept of a young man "on a journey of self-realization". Wenders also toyed with the idea of whether such a journey would be a mistake, and hence Handke and Wenders made the film as a refutation of Goethe's novel and German Romanticism, in which their character suffers because of his travels. Wenders also said that Wrong Move is about how to be able to grasp the world through language.{{cite web |url=http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/film-week-wrong-move-wim-wenders/ |title=Film of the Week: Wrong Move |last=Romney |first=Jonathan |date=15 April 2016 |access-date=9 June 2016 |work=Film Comment}}

Following The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty (1972), Wrong Move was Wenders' second film collaboration with his friend Handke, who was already a respected author. Handke wrote the screenplay two years after his mother had killed herself, which had deeply affected him and influenced the story's dark tone.

File:Labe udoli.jpg.]]

The film was shot over four weeks, including from a helicopter over the Elbe River. Landscape shots in the film were inspired by the 18th-century paintings of German artist Caspar David Friedrich.{{cite web |url=http://tiff.net/winter2016-cinematheque/on-the-road-the-films-of-wim-wenders/the-wrong-move |title=The Wrong Move |access-date=10 July 2016 |work=Toronto International Film Festival}}

The film marks the debut of Nastassja Kinski, whom Wenders' wife discovered in a disco in Munich.{{cite web |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/11394696/Nastassja-Kinski-interview-Ive-had-such-low-self-esteem.html |title=Nastassja Kinski interview: 'I've had such low self-esteem' |last=Jenkins |first=David |date=6 February 2015 |access-date=9 June 2016 |work=The Daily Telegraph}} She appeared topless in Wrong Move, and was 12 years old at the time of filming.{{cite web |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/reviewing-the-screen-works-of-wenders-1425259939 |title=Fresh Takes on Director Wim Wenders |last=Dollar |first=Steve |date=1 March 2015 |access-date=24 July 2016 |work=The Wall Street Journal}} Later she played one of the leading roles in Wenders' film Paris, Texas (1984), as well as appearing in his Faraway, So Close (1993).

On its international release, the title Falsche Bewegung proved challenging to render in English. The literal meaning is "False Movement", but in the United Kingdom it was released as The Wrong Move, while in the United States, it was titled The Wrong Movement.{{cite web |url=https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1359-paris-texas-on-the-road-again |title=Paris, Texas: On the Road Again |last=Roddick |first=Nick |date=27 January 2010 |access-date=23 June 2017 |publisher=The Criterion Collection}}

In 2016, The Criterion Collection released the film as Wrong Move on DVD and Blu-ray in Region 1. It was included with Alice in the Cities and Kings of the Road in the boxset Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy.{{cite web |url=http://www.rogerebert.com/demanders/on-the-road-again-wim-wenders-the-road-trilogy-comes-to-criterion-blu-ray |title=On The Road Again: Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy Comes To Criterion Blu-Ray |last=Sobczynski |first=Peter |date=1 June 2016 |access-date=9 June 2016 |work=Rogerebert.com}}

Image:Wim Wenders(cannesPhotocall)-.jpg received the German Film Award for Best Direction for Wrong Move.]]

In 2008, Chris Petit of The Guardian said initial reaction to Wrong Move was that "it felt talky and clotted, but now looks among the best of the work and much more considered than the popular Wings of Desire (1987)".{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/jan/05/1 |title=King of the road |last=Petit |first=Chris |date=5 January 2008 |access-date=10 June 2016 |work=The Guardian}} Critic Richard Brody writes in The New Yorker that Wrong Move is one of Wenders' best films, calling it a virtual documentary of West German sights and moods. Dave Kehr, writing for the Chicago Reader, states that "it's Wenders's most dour film, and the grim tone takes its toll. There is, though, a solid and disturbing talent at work here".{{cite web |url=http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-wrong-move/Film?oid=2686748 |title=The Wrong Move |last=Kehr |first=Dave |access-date=9 June 2016 |work=Chicago Reader|date=8 November 1985}} Jonathan Romney calls it "a film dense with philosophizing and speechifying, and the most thoroughly literary of all Wenders's films". TV Guide states that Wrong Move is "engaging" because of Wenders' direction, in spite of its emotional distance and unsympathetic characters.{{cite web |url=http://www.tvguide.com/movies/wrong-move/review/127844/ |title=Wrong Move |access-date=9 June 2016 |work=TV Guide}}

However, Time Out wrote that Wrong Move was unusual for Wenders' filmography, finding fault in Handke's screenplay.{{cite web |url=http://www.timeout.com/london/film/wrong-movement |title=Wrong Movement |access-date=9 June 2016 |work=Time Out|date=10 September 2012 }} Evaluating how it fitted into the "Road Movie trilogy", The A.V. Club asserts "it's unlikely that anyone saw Wenders' next film, Wrong Move, as any sort of sequel to Alice, spiritual or otherwise". The A.V. Club goes on to suggest that in being "far uglier and more depressive than the trilogy's bookends", it "perhaps serves as a necessary corrective to the other two films, suggesting as it does that there's no escaping one's own inner nature".{{cite web |url=http://www.avclub.com/review/criterion-offers-loose-trilogy-wim-wenders-king-ro-237372 |title=Criterion offers a loose trilogy from Wim Wenders, king of the road movie |last=D'Angelo |first=Mike |date=28 May 2016 |access-date=10 July 2016 |work=The A.V. Club}}

Wrong Move competed for the Gold Hugo at the 1975 Chicago International Film Festival.{{cite web |url=http://calgarycinema.org/screenings/2017/3/wrong-move-1975 |title=Wrong Move (1975) |date=March 2017 |access-date=1 June 2017 |work=Calgary Cinematheque}} It also won several honours at the German Film Awards, marking the first of two times Peter Kern won an acting award at the ceremony.{{cite web |url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/austrian-actor-peter-kern-last-818306 |title=Austrian Actor Peter Kern, the Last of the 'Auteur Dinosaurs', Dies at 66 |last=Roxborough |first=Scott |date=28 August 2015 |access-date=1 June 2017 |work=The Hollywood Reporter}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{IMDb title|0071483}}
• {{Rotten Tomatoes|wrong_move}}
• [https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4087-wrong-move-utter-detachment-utter-truth Wrong Move: Utter Detachment, Utter Truth] an essay by James Robison at the Criterion Collection

{{Peter Handke}}

{{Wim Wenders}}

{{Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wrong Move, The}}

Category:1975 films

Category:1970s drama road movies

Category:German drama road movies

Category:West German films

Category:Films based on works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Category:Films directed by Wim Wenders

Category:Films with screenplays by Peter Handke

Category:Films scored by Jürgen Knieper

Category:Films about suicide

Category:Works based on Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

Category:1970s German-language films

Category:1970s German films