Until the End of the World - 3-DVD Box Set ( Bis ans Ende der Welt ) ( Jusqu'au bout du monde )

Until the End of the World - 3-DVD Box Set (DVD) (*)

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Original Title: Bis ans Ende der Welt
Alternate Title: Jusqu'au bout du monde
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 )
German ( Dolby Digital 5.1 )
German ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
Germany ( PAL/Region 2 )

Running Time:
279 min

Aspect Ratio:
Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
3-DVD Set
Alternative Footage
Biographies
Box Set
Interactive Menu
Trailer(s)
Uncut

Movie filmed in 1991 and produced in:
Australia ( Australia, New Zealand )
France ( France, Benelux )
Germany ( Germany, Central Europe )

Directed By:
Wim Wenders

Written By:
Wim Wenders
Michael Almereyda
Peter Carey

Actors:
Solveig Dommartin ..... Claire Tourneur
Pietro Falcone ..... Mario
Enzo Turrin ..... Doctor
Chick Ortega ..... Chico Remy
Eddy Mitchell ..... Raymond Monnet
William Hurt ..... Sam Farber, alias Trevor McPhee
Adelle Lutz ..... Makiko
Ernie Dingo ..... Burt
Jean-Charles Dumay ..... Mechanic
Sam Neill ..... Eugene Fitzpatrick
Ernest Berk ..... Anton Farber
Christine Osterlein ..... Irina Farber
Rüdiger Vogler ..... Phillip Winter
Diogo Dória ..... Receptionist
Amália Rodrigues ..... Woman in Street Car

Synopsis:

Set in 1999, a woman (Dommartin) has a car accident with some bank robbers, who befriend and enlist her help to take the money to a drop in Paris. On the way she runs into another fugitive from the law (Hurt), an American who is being chased by the CIA. The charges are false, he says, that they want to confiscate a device his father has invented which allows you to record your dreams and vision. On the run from the bank robbers and the CIA, they span the globe, ending up in Australia at the research facility of his father (von Sydow), where they hope to be able to play back the recordings Hurt has made to his blind mother.

Wim Wenders' sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to 'see' visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refuge while attempting to bring the sight project to its fruition, in the meantime pondering earth's future in the wake of a nuclear disaster in outer space. Wenders' most ambitious film to date, budgeted at $23 million, Until the End Of the World is also among his most seriously flawed efforts -- despite a keen sense of cultural perception, a fascinating sci-fi take on life in the near-future and stunning Robby Muller cinematography, the picture never quite gels. Much of the blame seems to fall upon its distributors -- upon its wide release in 1991, the movie was drastically cut to a running time of 2 1/2 hours, resulting in a disjointed narrative that doesn't shift gears so much as grind them as the action moves from country to country. Still, while a three-hour version, issued on laserdisc in Japan, comes closer to realizing the full scope of Wenders' epic vision, rumors of a five-hour director's cut -- said to have been screened to thunderous applause at a handful of film festivals -- continue to persist, suggesting that a masterpiece may well exist here after all.

This product was added to our catalog on Monday 14 December, 2009.

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