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Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick). 1972. West Germany. Directed by Wim Wenders. In German; English subtitles. 103 min.
Wenders’s second feature, adapted from Peter Handke’s novel of the same name, is a tautly constructed, Hitchcockian tale of anomie and isolation. After goalkeeper Josef Bloch (Arthur Brauss) is ejected from a football match, he wanders around Vienna, spends the night with a cinema cashier, and commits a seemingly purposeless crime. As always, Wenders’s use of music is unerringly precise and surprising—“The Lion Sleeps Tonight” as the anthem to an existential crisis?—and as Bloch puts another coin in the jukebox, the film charts his moral disintegration with a resolute lack of sentimentality.
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