Paris, Texas (1984)

A man walks out of the Texas desert with no memory and no words, and the film follows him back toward the wife and son he abandoned. It is a western about the search rather than the showdown, and Harry Dean Stanton's weathered face carries the whole thing. Wim Wenders directed from Sam Shepard's script, and it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1984. Robby Müller's photography turns gas stations, motels and freeway overpasses into frontier landscapes, and Ry Cooder's spare score sounds like wind over scrub. Pick it for mood and heartbreak, not action; the long final conversation through a one-way mirror is what people remember.