Almost as often Wenders makes fictional narratives about young men attempting to sort out their existence, he makes "quasi-documentaries" -or "film essays" - about himself (he calls them "diary films) in which he attempts to authenticate his belief in cinema and his own stake in it. He has stated that his "diary films" are his film theory .
In Wenders" career a feature film often alternates with an essay film. The 1977 feature The American Friend was followed by the 1980 essay Lighting over the Water; the 1982 Hammett by the mixed-genre The State of Things and the essay Reverse Angle in the same year; the 1987 Wings of Desire by Notebooks on Cities and Clothes. Lis bon Story could be considered as a mixed genre, like The State of Things, following the feature films Until the end of the World in 1991 and in 1993 Faraway, so close.
But what is Wenders" film theory? In the last few years his name has been mentioned in the discussion of postmodern cinema. How easy is it to apply the postmodern tag to such a director, who always seems in search of his own home and identity and "he is at home in no house and in no country"?.
In post-World War II Germany, Wenders and many others of his generation embraced American culture; it was liberating, freeing many from the burdening legacies of the German past. Because of the stigma of fascism associated with traditional German culture (Wenders often mentions Beethoven as an example) they trusted rock and roll as a culture form for expressing his opposition. Although Wenders has called rock music a lifesaver, he also warned that it "colonizes the subconscious", articulating a critique of the American colonialism.
Wenders in an "absence of tradition" of his own, belonged to a "generation without fathers", felt a close tie to the filmic vision of the 1940s and 1950s Hollywood cinema that in his youth had instilled in him a positive image of America.
