Why Anthony Mann’s Gary Cooper Western Sparked Career Of ‘Perfect Days’ Director Wim Wenders: The Film That Lit My Fuse

The German filmmaker Wim Wenders is up for an Oscar for his gorgeously shot Perfect Days, a film about a fastidious man (Koji Yakusho) who cleans toilets in Tokyo who finds happiness and solace in his mundane life. The film is a touching meditation on happiness in simplicity, and how routine sometimes hides past trauma.

Perfect Days is Japan’s submission for Best International Feature, and we’ll know March 10 if he wins his first Oscar.

An aspiring painter, Wenders instead turned his attention to a moving canvas and had his breakthrough on the ferocious 1977 film The American Friend, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game, which starred Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz. His follow-up, Paris, Texas, won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, with Wenders winning Best Director soon after at the festival for Wings of Desire. His other lauded films include Until the End of the World, Faraway, So Close! and The End of Violence.

In this exceptional installment of The Film That Lit My Fuse, Wenders explains in detail how he found his path to become one of Germany’s most iconic filmmakers.