Wim Wenders | A Curzon Collection

A complete Wenders retrospective at a very keen price.

It is wonderful to have this compilation of 22 Blu-ray discs of almost all of Wim Wenders’ films. He has been one of my favorite filmmakers since I first saw his films some 35 years ago. I look forward to watching all of these films, but the presentation of this set is very disappointing. On the plus side, the box is quite compact. However, there is very little textual information, and there’s almost nothing about the individual films. There is a half page of text in a very tiny font — you will certainly need a magnifying glass — with some information about the films, but only the dates they were released and information about the restorations. Nothing about the actors, the crew, locations, nothing. This means that you will have to go to Wikipedia to find out anything other than the titles and dates of the films. For a set that is supposed to be a career retrospective, this is a very big disappointment.

Poorly glued together pages not properly attached which is disappointing as it comes at premium price

The scans and presentations are excellent. However, the disc storage is not great as they are held in slots in the thick card pages and you need to pinch the edge between thumb and forefinger to extract. Additionally, I suspect some previously purchased individual discs will need to be retained as I am not sure that all of the extras are included. One noticeable omission is the 3D version of PINA as the new box only includes the 2D presentation.

I have seen "The American Friend" from this collection and skimmed through others.The picture quality and sound are very good. The extras are copious and interesting.The discs contain English subtitles only for parts spoken in other languages.There are no English subtitles for English dialogue, or for commentaries and interviews in English.So if you are hard of hearing, or have difficulty following English spoken with foreign accent, this set is not for you.The box is poorly designed. To get the discs out of their snug pockets, you need to grab them by the edge and pull them out. This leaves finger marks every time you take them out to view.The printed material is limited, and in very small print.The producers had very good content to start with. It is a pity they did not pay attention to essential details.