After 44 Years, This Wim Wenders Film Finally Comes to American Theaters

Wim Wenders' second feature, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, killed it at the world's oldest film festival in 1972. Then it was pulled from theaters and denied distribution. The reason was its soundtrack—popular music from the time that floated out of radios, car stereos and jukeboxes. That original, handpicked playlist was only cleared for public use in Germany, and only for a very limited time, so Goalie was restricted to obscure television time slots until 2014.

You'll never see that movie, but you can catch its closest approximation this Friday at the kickoff for the NW Film Center's Wenders retrospective.

It's the story of a German goalkeeper, ejected from a game, who then wanders lifelessly through back alleys, movie theaters and women's apartments. In between long shots of newspaper kiosks, he commits a murder, seemingly out of pure boredom.

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is artistic and pensive, and requires a lot of patience. But it also gut-punches you with all the tenderness of a streamliner. That's thanks to Wenders' unparalleled knack for understatement. After goalie Josef Bloch (Arthur Brauss) kills the unsuspecting Gloria (Erika Pluhar), there is only silence, the sound of coins as Bloch picks change up off the table, then a sudden stab of violin strings and the scene cuts out.

In order to re-release a restored version of Goalie two years ago, Wenders created a band to record six new tracks for the film. They try for authenticity, using '50s and '60s instruments and analog recording techniques, but it's impossible to know what we're missing. Buying the rights for the original songs would've cost more than it had cost to make the film, and the original magnetic tapes were destroyed by vinegar syndrome by the time of film's re-release.

Look to Wenders' filmography for a tease of what might have been. Twenty years after Goalie, his soundtrack for Until the End of the World dropped new tracks by Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, R.E.M., Patti Smith, K.D. Lang and U2 (whose 1993 music video for "Stay [Faraway, So Close!]" he went on to direct).

This man knows his bands, making the original Goalie a sad loss, but I'll argue that a second-string keeper is better than no keeper at all.

Critic's grade: A

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is at NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Friday, March 4.

Willamette Week