Wrong Move (1975)

Glückstadt in northern Germany, Bonn, a palace along the Rhine, a housing project on the outskirts of Frankfurt, and finally the Zugspitze—these are the stations of the journey that the young Wilhelm Meister hopes will save him from the gloomy irritability and despondency that plague him in his hometown. In unfamiliar places, he thinks that he will be able to do what he has always had an uncontrollable drive to do—to write. He wants to become an author. With the journey that his mother gives him permission to make, he hopes to broaden his horizons and, above all, to find himself.

In Goethe’s novel “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,” which provided the source material for Peter Handke’s script, a journey of this kind was still a “genuine movement.” In the literature of the 19th century, particularly in the German Bildungsroman, the topos of the journey is always linked to lastingly significant changes and experiences. Traveling is synonymous with the successful search for one’s own identity.

But the Wilhelm of “Wrong Move” must arrive at the painful recognition that—today—a journey alone no longer leads to the desired goal. His path leads him into an unbroken series of failures through his own fault and that of all the people he meets on his way: the street singer Laertes struggling with his Nazi past, the mute girl Mignon (Nastassja Kinski in her first role), the poet, and the actress Therese.

Gold Award for Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Director of Photography, Best Editor, Best Music, and Best Ensemble Performance (Actors) at the 1975 German Film Academy Awards