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Until the End of the World

Original title: Bis ans Ende der Welt
  • 1991
  • R
  • 2h 38m
IMDb RATING
6.8/10
11K
YOUR RATING
William Hurt and Solveig Dommartin in Until the End of the World (1991)
Home Video Trailer from Warner Home Video
Play trailer2:27
1 Video
51 Photos
ActionDramaSci-Fi

In 1999, Claire's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash. She rescues Sam and starts traveling around the world with him. Writer Eugene follows them and writes their story, a... Read allIn 1999, Claire's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash. She rescues Sam and starts traveling around the world with him. Writer Eugene follows them and writes their story, as a way of recording dreams is being invented.In 1999, Claire's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash. She rescues Sam and starts traveling around the world with him. Writer Eugene follows them and writes their story, as a way of recording dreams is being invented.

  • Director
    • Wim Wenders
  • Writers
    • Peter Carey
    • Wim Wenders
    • Solveig Dommartin
  • Stars
    • William Hurt
    • Solveig Dommartin
    • Pietro Falcone
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    6.8/10
    11K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Wim Wenders
    • Writers
      • Peter Carey
      • Wim Wenders
      • Solveig Dommartin
    • Stars
      • William Hurt
      • Solveig Dommartin
      • Pietro Falcone
    • 98User reviews
    • 48Critic reviews
    • 63Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 3 wins & 2 nominations

    Videos1

    Until The End of the World
    Trailer 2:27
    Watch Until The End of the World

    Photos51

    Max von Sydow and Solveig Dommartin in Until the End of the World (1991)
    William Hurt and Solveig Dommartin in Until the End of the World (1991)
    William Hurt and Solveig Dommartin in Until the End of the World (1991)
    Until the End of the World (1991)
    Until the End of the World (1991)
    Ernie Dingo, David Gulpilil, Chick Ortega, and Rüdiger Vogler in Until the End of the World (1991)
    William Hurt and Jeanne Moreau in Until the End of the World (1991)
    Max von Sydow in Until the End of the World (1991)
    Solveig Dommartin in Until the End of the World (1991)
    Solveig Dommartin in Until the End of the World (1991)
    Until the End of the World (1991)
    Solveig Dommartin in Until the End of the World (1991)

    Top cast

    Edit
    William Hurt
    William Hurt
    • Sam Farber, alias Trevor McPhee
    Solveig Dommartin
    Solveig Dommartin
    • Claire Tourneur
    Pietro Falcone
    • Mario
    Enzo Turrin
    • Arzt
    Chick Ortega
    • Chico Rémy
    Eddy Mitchell
    Eddy Mitchell
    • Raymond Monnet
    Adelle Lutz
    Adelle Lutz
    • Makiko
    Ernie Dingo
    Ernie Dingo
    • Burt
    Jean-Charles Dumay
    • Automechaniker
    • (as Jean Charles Dumay)
    Sam Neill
    Sam Neill
    • Eugene Fitzpatrick
    Ernest Berk
    • Anton Farber
    Christine Oesterlein
    • Irina Farber
    • (as Christine Österlein)
    Rüdiger Vogler
    Rüdiger Vogler
    • Phillip Winter
    Diogo Dória
    Diogo Dória
    • Hotelportier
    • (as Diogo Doria)
    Amália Rodrigues
    Amália Rodrigues
    • Frau in Strassenbahn
    • (as Amalia Rodrigues)
    Elena Prudnikova
    • Krasikova
    • (as Elena Smirnova)
    Jinzhan Zhang
    • LKW-Fahrer
    • (as Zhang Jinzhan)
    Naoto Takenaka
    Naoto Takenaka
    • Hotelwächter
    • Director
      • Wim Wenders
    • Writers
      • Peter Carey
      • Wim Wenders
      • Solveig Dommartin
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Wim Wenders' original rough cut for this film was twenty hours long.
    • Goofs
      When many of the European characters leave the Mbantua settlement and take a group photo, believing the adventure to be over, the voice-over mentions that it is February, 2000. Yet shortly after we see Henry Farber trying a new series of experiments on recording dream imagery, and a computer display for the current experiment says January 21.
    • Quotes

      Eugene Fitzpatrick: [voice over] Soon they were hooked; all of them. They lived to see their dreams, and when they slept they dreamed about their dreams. They had arrived at the island of dreams together; but in a short time they were oceans apart. I watched helplessly as Claire and Sam were drowning in their own nocturnal imagery. They ignored each other, and neglected themselves. The dreams which should have been flushed away with the first yawn, were now their only diet; and thus became more and more concentrated. They made monsters for themselves that they could neither tolerate nor do without... They wandered in and out of lost worlds. Feelings and figures emerged from a forgotten past. Their dreams became black holes of isolation... They suffered, finally; from a complete loss of reality.

    • Alternate versions
      The film exists in four separate versions. The first is the significantly cut American 158-minute version released by Warner Bros. in theaters, and on VHS, LaserDisc, and some streaming platforms. Wenders has disparagingly referred this cut as the 'reader's digest version'. The second is a 179-minute cut that existed only on Japanese LaserDisc. The third is Wim Wenders' director's cut, which runs 300 minutes. This cut significantly expands scenes, motivates Claire's romantic involvement with Sam Farber and keeps it from seeming less frivolous and more the expression of a wounded heart, additional scenes in Japan, and in San Francisco with Allen Garfield as an evil car salesman (a take-off on his character in another Wenders film), and numerous other expansions/additions. This full-length version divided the film into three parts, all given episode names, and all with opening credits because it was originally intended for this version to be shown as three separate films, or as a mini-series. This 300-minute cut was only available on DVD in Germany, Italy and France. It was screened several times over the years in America and the UK: the National Film Theatre in London on Saturday 2nd July 1994, December 6, 1996 at the University of Washington, with director Wim Wenders attending, Jan. 14, 2001 at the American Cinematheque (with Wenders attending), February 24, 2001 at the Directors Guild of America Theater with Wenders announcing the film would be released on DVD.
    • Connections
      Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Memo to the Academy - 1992 (1992)
    • Soundtracks
      Opening Titles
      Written by Graeme Revell

      Performed by David Darling (cello solo)

      Courtesy of Trans Glide Music BMI

    User reviews98

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    7/10
    Seeing The World For The First And Last Time
    Wim Wenders over 5 hour globetrecking cyberpunk epic, is intended to be the ultimate road movie. It plays out like a miniseries, about a woman who just separated from her writer boyfriend(played by Sam Niel who serves as narrator), and crashes cars with wounded bank-robbers, they offer to give her some of the money if she will transport the cash the rest of the way to Paris for them. She agrees and uses her money to finance the trip that ensues for the rest of the movie. She immediately after meets William Hurt, a mysterious hitchhiker she becomes fascinated with. He is on the lamb, but from who, and why? After he ditches her and steals a hefty sum she becomes obsessed with finding him.

    All the while a rouge Indian nuclear satellite hovers above the Earth, haywire and endangering a possible nuclear Apocalypse if it accidentally detonates. The world is closer to ending than it has ever been, which means its just a story on the news in the background, most people try to ignore.

    The first segment, in this three part film, is their chase cross country and continent, "A Dance Around The World", as the book about their lives is latter called.

    They begin in Italy, and go on to Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Bejing, Tokyo, San Francisco, and finally the Australlian Outback, our heroin Miriam discovers, that Hurt is wanted for a stolen piece of Government property, a device that records the experience of seeing and translates the information as images. He is recording the most beautiful places in the world, for his blind mother. He is the son of Max Von Sydow, the inventor of the device. Their cat and mouse game becomes a whirlwind romance of constant movement and escape.

    By the third segment they reach Sydow's underground lab in Australlia, where they also discover that the device cannot only record seeing for the blind, but can record dreams if left on during sleep. The aboriginals who run the lab with Sydow refuse to work on his dream machine. Slowly but believably the rest of the staff, becomes obsessed with staring into the recordings of their dreams, "It got to the point where they dreamed of their dreams...and fell ever deeper into the black well of Narcissus .".

    There are car crashes, planes losing power midlight, and one gorgeous locale after another. Like "Alphaville" and "The Fall" this film is completely indebted to its beautiful sights, that it finds and photographs. At five hours long, you can imagine it meanders a good deal. And it does, but for a film so dedicated to the pure spectacle and profound importance and danger of "seeing things", I didn't mind.

    Future content wise, there is a clear opposition between the dual natures of the machine, helping the blind to see the world, and allowing the sightful to intrude upon their private internal world, whose appeal is magnetic and addictive. Tecnhology is a double edged sword, amazing but not without its serious ethical and philosophical dilemmas (which is the more real world the one within or without? etc), this movie doesn't delve into it conversation wise, it's lets everything play out, at five hours it gives you the credit that you can work it out for yourself.

    It's really just a beautiful film to watch, that's much sweeter and gentler than most sci-fi, and more fascinating too because it doesn't shove its implications down your throat.

    Wim Wenders, got people like The Talking Heads, Can, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, U2, Nick Cave, and many many more, to make original songs for the soundtrack about the new millennium. While many of the songs are very good, most are awkwardly placed as well. No doubt Wenders was really excited about all the music and just wanted to use everything.

    Definitely flawed, but a richly excessive and eccentric experiments and time capsule. Despite its hefty run time, I thought Wenders was sensitive, to the changing dynamics of the future world, it's not dystopian and it's not Star Trek/Fifth Element Space Opera either, it occupies, a space, where simple good or bad, are no longer really relevant to discussion.

    At one point when everyone assumes the world has ended Sam Niel's character is playing in a small band with several Aboriginal neural scientists, a few french-bank robbers, a British bounty hunter, and some random strays who wandered into the Australian compound fearful of nuclear fallout, and they play a music that sounds like Australlian Blue Grass; Didgeridoo's and pianos, harmonica's, and trumpets, blending together to create something singular and new. He notes to himself, "This entire trip has not been about helping a blind woman to see, or gazing into ourselves. But this adventure, the satellite, the machine, the crash, it all occurred, so we could be here, at this moment, to create this music which would have never otherwise existed, right at the crest of the end of the world".

    Few sci-fi films are dedicated to power of music(that the characters play), words(that Sam Neil records for his novel), and images(of coming war, of the beauty of the world, and the contours of our own mind/dream/souls,etc). In Alphaville when the computer asks Lemmy Caution, "What moves the night?", Caution responds, point blank, "Poetry". Wim Wenders updates, upgrades, and extends this concept for the new millennium. Though I cant remember too much of what was said, I'm still humming along days later, with some pretty pictures circulating in my head like post cards from an alternate universe.

    It's a bittersweet, love, travelogue, adventure story, for the New Millennium; "Where In The Wolrd Is Carmen San Diego?", as written by William Gibson on a sentimental day.
    helpful•21
    4
    • loganx-2
    • Apr 28, 2009

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    FAQ1

    • What "futuristic" technology does the movie accurately predict?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • December 25, 1991 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • Germany
      • France
      • Australia
      • United States
    • Official sites
      • Criterion Channel
      • Criterion Collection
    • Languages
      • English
      • French
      • Italian
      • Japanese
      • German
    • Also known as
      • Hasta el fin del mundo
    • Filming locations
      • Tosca Cafe - 242 Columbus Avenue, North Beach, San Francisco, California, USA(Claire meets Sam again)
    • Production companies
      • Argos Films
      • Road Movies Filmproduktion
      • Village Roadshow Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $23,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $829,625
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $38,553
      • Dec 29, 1991
    • Gross worldwide
      • $829,625
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      2 hours 38 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.78 : 1

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