About the film
- Directed by
- Wim Wenders
- Released
- September 12, 1991
- US theatrical
- December 25, 1991
- Certification
- R
- Country
- Germany, Australia, France
- Starring
- Solveig Dommartin, William Hurt (Sam Farber, alias Trevor McPhee), Sam Neill, Rüdiger Vogler
More credits
- Language
- English, French, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Portuguese, German
- Origin
- DE
- Studios
- Wim Wenders Stiftung, Argos films, Village Roadshow, Road Movies
- Written by
- Wim Wenders, Solveig Dommartin, Peter Carey
- Produced by
- Ulrich Felsberg, Jonathan T. Taplin, Paulo Branco, Greg Coote, Anatole Dauman, Jean-Pierre Spiri-Mercanton, Kim Vecera
- Cinematography
- Robby Müller
- Music
- Graeme Revell
- Also starring
- Max von Sydow, Jeanne Moreau, Ernie Dingo, Chick Ortega, Eddy Mitchell, Chishū Ryū
- Budget
- $23,000,000
- Box office
- $752,856
He shot the film across four continents. It was almost five hours long. His distributors demanded he cut it in half. So he made a duplicate first, did all their butchering on the copy, and hid the original negatives away.
For nearly three decades, the only version most people could see was the one he called the "Reader's Digest version." Then the hidden negatives resurfaced, and the full 287-minute cut he had always intended was restored in 4K.
UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991) is Wim Wenders' science-fiction road movie set in the far-off year of 1999.
Before shooting, Wenders approached some of the world's top musicians with a strange instruction: Do not just write me a song, he said. Write me the song you think you will be making in 1999.
Talking Heads sent back their final single. U2 was so pleased with their contribution they reclaimed it for Achtung Baby. R.E.M., Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode all answered the same impossible brief. For years, more people owned the album than had seen the movie.
Near the end of the film its characters stand alone in the Australian desert, unable to look away from small handheld screens playing their own recorded dreams, addicted to images of themselves. Wenders shot that in 1990.
How to see Until the End of the World (1991)
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Source: JustWatch
Physical media
Movies they don’t want you to see
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The two-and-a-half hour version was interminable enough!
Was definitely the music that stood out for me.
This is one of my favorite movies–the 5-hour version. I saw it twice in Hollywood at special screenings where Wim Wenders would share his extended version with film buffs. And if you search hard enough, you just might find a copy of it online. 😉
I saw this when it first came out, being a big Wim Wenders fan since seeing Wings of Desire. I also bought the soundtrack, which I still have. Now I’ll have to find and watch the director’s cut!
My all time favorite film.
I saw it at the Angelika on Houston street in (I Guess) 1991, it did seem long but not in a bad way.
I have been trying to find the name of this movie for almost thirty years. Finally! It’s especially timely today with everyone burying their heads into their phones.
TCM Channel has twice featured the full 2019 version which I have made sure to place on my DVR both times for easy access.
As a Wenders fan, I’m sure I saw this back in the day. This is going on my rewatch list 👍
Its surprising how well it depicts the future given when it was made. It’s one of my favourite films and I remember going to extremes to get the Italian dvd set which was the first long version .
It’s reminds me a lot of what it feels like to travel extensively to new places on your own .
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Masterpiece film with the best soundtrack ever.
So… we are all destined, to be consumed, by narcissism…
—
I need to see this movie!
Must see it again
I marvel looking back at the film that they didn’t have a more Syd Mead visual futurist designing it – all the ‘laptops’ are so hilariously luggable and seem silly designs – the internet was 5 years away and they barely predicted it other than the detectives search programs which seemed more like hacking credit card companies. The lack of flatscreens even simulated anywhere – 2,000 gigabytes transferred over whatever Arpanet could have evolved into sans CERN and Lee to invent http for browsers now seems a little laughable. The computers ‘submerged’ in tanks was funny and cool looking, but not realistic. And the “tech” of recording vision was less elegant than the cooler Trumbull written and directed “BRAINSTORM” stuff from 1981 – also a good version of what Doctor Farber ‘invents’.
Still even at 4hrs 47min the film doesn’t bore me and I have lost track of how many times I played the shorter version for years – decades now. The photography is so beautiful as is Claire. I remember what it was like to imagine the world could end in 1999 which still seemed so far off in 1991 – and funny no one was worried that all the computers would go crazy anyway when the calendar flipped over to Jan 1 2000!
The thought of waiting for the radiation was also familiar from having read “On The Beach” also set in Australia as a boy around 1970. Funny in the film no one mentions that as they wait seeming to expect to die of radiation cancer. And all the principal actors would die of cancer, but then most people do.
Reduced to typewriters I also chuckled that everyone seemed well supplied with months of coffee and cigarettes in the ‘apocalypse’. Must remember now to lay in a stockpile for the coming Trump one! And the talk that they had seen the Rolling Stones ‘farewell’ concert in 1995 as a throwaway line that turned out not to be – and that the Stones still exist 30 years after that fictional concert made me laugh and laugh.
I’m reminded of the line about scifi from Futurama when Fry discovers in the 30th century that Star Trek is banned and mention of it is culturally verboten. Fry insists they should still be watching it because it gives people hope about the future and Lela drolly points out it’s set 700 in her current past.
And it’s funny to watch other scifi like 2001 or Blade Runner set in 2019 and this film and realize their ‘futures’ are firmly set in the past too.
It’s so hard to predict ‘future’ tech. As a child we used to fret about HAL9000 artificial brains would go berserk and here we are with a new generation just gaga about AI like it’s the greatest thing ever.
If there’s one thing scifi points out we imagine future horrors and then the masses embrace them. I’m sure when the time comes people will climb into Matrix pods and dream their lives away willingly and it won’t take Terminators to herd them into them!
I’m now older than Max Von Sydow was when he played Dr Farber which is sobering too. He still seems ancient in the film and was only 90 when he died in 2020.
This and other now ‘passed’ prediction films will at best have small cult audiences or fade completely into cinema oblivion. And if you’ve ever watched old black and white scifi or read now passed years in scifi literature it all probably bores younger people to tears.
But there’s still a lesson in how terrible we are always going to be at imagining the future because we never get it right and never bet on the right stuff. And that’s instructive about what we hope for as well as fear.
That’s ALWAYS a good perspective to have.
it’s glorious. not enough people know about this film
Fantastic movie. Visonary. Still valid, still futuristic. And I loved the inspiration on the “Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego” early computer games. I have a copy of the Criterion Collection version, and I was lucky to see the whole 287min on the big screen during a film festival in Mexico City in 1992, if I remember correctly.
How can we see it
Plus a great soundtrack (Someone surely wrote before me) Cave, This Mortal Coil, Depeche Mode, etc..
Marc Rettig movie night?
Vaguely remember seeing this. Sure why not. Needs beer.
I love this film and the soundtrack is incredible.
Wenders sets the standard. Genius.
One of my all-time favorite films. I’m pretty sure I saw a longer version at an art theater in the Boston area when it came out. It’s also one of my all-time favorite soundtracks as well!
Years later I realized it’s the perfect movie to watch on a cross-country flight, heh.
Incredible soundtrack
Wim Wenders has never made a movie that was not artistically dense and deeply fascinating. Wings Of Desire and Paris, Texas are among my all time favorite films.
Great soundtrack
I was blessed with stumbling upon Wim Wenders one night in Paris, 30 meters and 30 years away from the small cinema where I fell in love with his masterpiece!!!
Ans now dream scanners are almost real.
Saw it. It took a couple nights. Kind of wild
Eerily prescient.
Frank Capra once wrote. There are no rules in film making. Except, not to be boring.
Bill Hunt
All the options are for the Reader’s Digest version. Where’s the full thing?
I can’t remember if I’ve seen the extended version, but I recall what I saw being interesting in the first half, less interesting in the second half, and feeling generally like they were two disconnected films.
Saw the long version a few years ago, it’s no Bladerunner. Hasn’t aged well.
Soundtrack is sweet desolation, just melancholy and pure.
Best cyberpunk movie I’ve seen – extended version is a masterpiece
Is it any good?
I saw the Reader’s Digest version in the theater and just didn’t connect with it. Years later I ordered Road to Salinas and instead received the director’s cut of this film. I contacted the seller and they asked if I’d like to return it. I thought, “weeeeell I saw it once and wasn’t impressed… but live his other films… maybe I’ll watch it once and return it.” Never returned it. The long version makes perfect sense! Whoever cut it for time is a #$%&@ idiot!
Fantastic movie, very hard to find on media, especially DVD. Criterion to the rescue.
Such a great film and sound track. Saw the readers digest version on a big screen and was blown away. Seemed like three separate movies in one. I still listen to the soundtrack to this day.
Truly a pinnacle of filmmaking. When it was released I went to the theatre three nights in a row. One of the most prescient films ever made. And objectively as beautiful at times as anything in the amazing Wenders library.
I have not seen the full cut, if there really is one in circulation, but the “standard” version is well worth the watch and the music is great. Also love ‘Wings of Desire’. You can watch it casually or with full intrigue and it is a great film.
Calling All Angels by Jane Siberry is the greatest masterpiece on the soundtrack
Fantastic film, I’ve never seen the restored version.