Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 30: Tue Jan 30

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (Wenders, 1972): Picturehouse Central, 6.45pm



Having remained unavailable for three decades, the film (formerly released as The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty) returns to UK cinemas in January 2018, restored and remastered in stunning 4K, commissioned by the Wim Wenders Foundation under the direct supervision of Wenders himself.

Time Out review:
The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty
 outdoes even Wenders' subsequent Alice in the Cities in its sense that everything shown is at once subjective and objective. German goalie Bloch (Brauss) walks out of a game in Vienna, hangs around, commits an arbitrary murder, and then takes a coach to the Austrian border to look up an old flame. It's the journey of a man who's getting too old for his job, living off his nerves, sustained by his taste for Americana, movies and rock (everything from Hitchcock to 'Wimaway'). Brauss' engagingly hangdog face anchors it all in recognisable human feelings, while avoiding the least hint of 'psychological' explanation. More than in his later movies, Wenders' style here has a remarkably charged quality: every frame haunts you for goddam weeks.
Tony Rayns


Here (and above) is an extract.

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