Stranger Than Paradise. 1984. USA. Directed by Jim Jarmusch. Screenplay by Jarmusch, John Lurie. With John Lurie, Eszter Balint, Richard Edson, Cecillia Stark. 35mm. In English, Hungarian. 89 min.
Jim Jarmusch’s second feature, made following his time at New York University’s film school, was jump-started with a gift of leftover 16mm film stock from Wim Wenders, who had just completed Der Stand der Dinge (1982). Jarmusch turned this celluloid encouragement into a 30-minute short, which he soon expanded into a minimalist, deadpan three-act road movie about desultory immigrant New Yorker Willie (John Lurie), his friend Eddie (Richard Edson), and his teenage cousin Eva (Eszter Balint). In the press notes, Jarmusch described the film as a “semi-neorealist black-comedy in the style of an imaginary Eastern-European film director obsessed with Ozu and familiar with the 1950s American television show The Honeymooners.” The film went on to win the Caméra d’Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, eventually becoming one of the most influential independent films of the decade.