Retrospective : Framed Horizons

If you want to approach American films with the help of some fine paintings, then the work of Charles M. Russel and Frederick Remington come to mind. These two painters of the frontier lead us to the films of John Ford just as Norman Rockwell evokes the best moments of Frank Capra. But as the West was won and skyscrapers started to reach ever upwards, one painter captured the atmosphere of urban America, affecting filmmakers from Hitchcock to Lynch, Wenders and beyond.

The paintings of Edward Hopper come with a strong sense of narrative. There is an atmosphere, a promise of something but also a burden from the past. It is no surprise that his ‘House by the Railroad’ affected Hitchcock when he was planning Psycho. However, although Hopper often chose rooms as his setting, all of his paintings have movement in them. We expect someone to walk in, or the person portrayed to do something in his solitude. We experience a moment that is both private and public. The paintings of Hopper are like frames from a film - he often uses space and light in the same way as the film noir genre, but also the feeling of motion is as fitting here as for the open road and horizon which Wim Wenders incorporates into his own quest for America.

In this way Hopper becomes part of his effort to understand the American landscape. Not quite the typical European, yet not pure Hollywood either. In The End of Violence, citizen Wenders goes as far as recreating the most known painting by Hopper, ‘Nighthawks’, on screen.

Whilst David Lynch captures the inner world of Hopper’s paintings with his night rides across American suburbia, for Wenders it would seem to be the surfaces and composition that he wants to touch before moving on to the next town on the prairie (the poster for "Don’t Come Knocking" if anything reminds us of Hopper). In the same way that a good road movie comes from the past and heads for tomorrow, allowing us a moment to follow the journey in the present, the paintings of Hopper have a feeling of timeless presence, a feeling of moving and standing still at the same time.

Atso Pärnänen