Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 162: Mon Jun 13

The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty (Wenders, 1972): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This film, also being screened on June 3rd and 24th, is part of the Big Screen Classics strand at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Time Out review:
The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty
 outdoes even Wim Wenders' subsequent Alice in the Cities in its sense that everything shown is at once subjective and objective. German goalie Bloch (Arthur 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 Wim Wenders' introduction to the film.

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