Stranger Than Paradise


Stranger Than Paradise is a 1984 American black-and-white absurdist/deadpan comedy film, written, directed, and co-edited by Jim Jarmusch and starring jazz musician John Lurie, former Sonic Youth drummer-turned-actor Richard Edson, and Hungarian-born actress and violinist Eszter Balint. The film features a minimalist plot in which the main character, Willie, has a cousin from Hungary named Eva. Eva stays with him for ten days before going to Cleveland. Willie and his friend Eddie eventually go to Cleveland to visit Eva, and the three then take a trip to Florida. This film is shot entirely in single long takes with no standard coverage.

Plot

The film is a three-act story about Willie, who lives in Brooklyn, and his interactions with the two other main characters, his cousin Eva and friend Eddie.
In the first act, Willie, a surly small-time gambler and hustler of Hungarian origin, receives a phone call from his Aunt Lotte in Cleveland informing him that his expected visit by his cousin Eva, who is coming from Hungary to live with Lotte, will have to be extended to ten days because Lotte is unexpectedly in the hospital. Willie at first makes it clear that he does not want Eva there. He even orders Eva to speak English for the ten-day period, not Hungarian, as Willie strongly identifies as "American." But Willie soon begins to enjoy her company. He becomes protective, discouraging her from going out alone, or beyond a certain street. Yet he refuses to take Eva on his trips to the race track with Eddie, Willie's good-natured but dull gambling buddy and hustling accomplice. Eddie tries to persuade Willie to bring Eva along, to no avail. Willie and Eva watch football in the afternoon and late-night sci-fi movies. His esteem for her increases when Eva comes back from an excursion with a few canned food items, a TV dinner "especially" for Willie, and to Willie's astonishment, a carton of cigarettes, all obtained without money. Willie smiles and shakes her hand, telling her "I think you're alright, kid."
Eva, smart, pretty, and low-key, likes to play her favorite song, Screamin' Jay Hawkins's "I Put a Spell on You" which Willie dislikes. He buys her a dress, which she dislikes. At this point it becomes evident that Willie has developed an attraction to Eva. After ten days Eva leaves, and Willie is clearly upset to see her go. Eddie, on his way to visit Willie, sees her discard the dress on the street, but does not tell Willie this.
The second act starts a year later and opens with Willie and Eddie winning a large amount of money by cheating at a game of poker. Willie asks Eddie about borrowing his brother-in-law's car, telling him "I just wanna get out'a here, see sump'in different, ya know?". In truth, Willie wants to go to Cleveland to see Eva.
It is the middle of winter. They arrive in Cleveland and after stopping at Lotte's house, they go to surprise Eva at her job at a local fast food restaurant, where she is excited and pleased to see them. However, soon after arriving in Cleveland they are just as bored as they were in New York. They play cards with Lotte to pass the time. They end up tagging along with Eva and her would-be boyfriend to the movies. They go to the pier on the frozen snow-covered lakefront to take in the view. Pressed by Eddie, Willie eventually decides to go back to New York. When they say their goodbyes, Eva jokingly suggests that if they win big at the race track, they should "kidnap" her. Willie responds they would take her someplace warm, because "this place is awful."
The final act begins with Willie suggesting to Eddie, on the road back to New York, to go to Florida instead. Willie then suggests they turn around and pick up Eva and bring her along, which they do, to Lotte's obvious consternation. The three of them get to Florida and get a room at a motel. The next morning the men leave Eva asleep in the room. Eva, having awakened to find herself alone and with no food or cash, wanders outside in the windy bleak overcast afternoon to the beach, which appears not much more appealing than the windy bleak snowy Lake Erie scene in Cleveland from which they fled. When they come back, Eva's annoyance turns to dismay when the distraught pair return to reveal they have lost most of their money on dog races. They go for a walk on the beach to figure out what to do. Willie is clearly annoyed with Eddie, as the dog races were his idea.
Willie and Eddie decide to go out and bet the last of their money on horse races. Willie still refuses to let Eva come along, so she goes out on the beach for a walk. Wearing a flamboyant wide-brimmed straw hat she has just gotten from a gift shop, a drug dealer mistakes her for a courier he has been waiting for. He gives her an envelope containing a large sum of money while berating her and her presumed boss. She goes back to the motel, leaves some of the money for Willie and Eddie, and writes them a note explaining that she is going to the airport. Willie and Eddie, having won big at the horse races and gone through the better part of a bottle of whisky, return to the motel to find Eva gone. Willie reads her note and they go to the airport to stop her. Eva discusses with an airline ticket agent her options for flying to Europe, ending with a mention that there is a plane leaving in 44 minutes for her home city of Budapest. She appears indecisive.
When Willie and Eddie get to the airport, Willie, believing Eva has boarded the flight to Budapest, conceives a plan: buy a ticket to Budapest, get on the plane, and convince Eva to stay in the United States. The second to last shot shows Eddie outside watching the plane flying overhead, lamenting that Willie was apparently not able to get off the plane and that now both Willie and Eva are headed to Budapest. The final shot, however, shows Eva back at the motel, returning to an empty room, looking tired and perplexed, toying with the straw hat.

Cast

Writer and director Jim Jarmusch shot his first feature, Permanent Vacation as his final thesis while at New York University's film school, and spent the following four years making Stranger than Paradise. At NYU, he had studied under director Nicholas Ray, who had brought him along as his personal assistant for the production of Lightning over Water, a portrait of Ray that was being filmed by Wim Wenders. It was Wenders who granted Jarmusch the leftover film stock from his subsequent film Der Stand der Dinge that would enable the young director to shoot the 30-minute short subject film that would become Stranger Than Paradise. This short was released as a standalone film in 1982, and shown as "Stranger Than Paradise" at the 1983 International Film Festival Rotterdam. When it was later expanded into a three-act feature, that name was appropriated for the feature itself, and the initial segment was renamed "The New World".

Release and reception

The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Caméra d'Or award for debut films. It also won the Golden Leopard and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention at the 1984 Locarno International Film Festival, the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association, the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1985 and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Picture of 1985, the film went on to win the Kniema Junpo Award for best foreign language film in 1987, the award for National Film Registry at the National Film Preservation Board, USA in 2002.
The film made $2,436,000, significantly more than its budget of around $100,000.

Critics

The film currently holds a 96% "fresh" rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 7.5/10 based on 20 critics.
Film critic Pauline Kael gave the film a generally positive review.
The film was voted the Best Picture of 1984 by the National Society of Film Critics.

Home media

Stranger Than Paradise has been released on DVD by The Criterion Collection as its 400th title. The DVD contains a second disc which includes Jarmusch's first film, Permanent Vacation. Both films were restored for the DVD release using high-definition digital transfers overseen and sanctioned by the director. Supplementary footage on the second disc includes Kino ’84: Jim Jarmusch, a series of interviews with the cast and crew from both films by a German television program, as well as Some Days in January, a behind-the-scenes Super-8 film by the director's brother. An accompanying booklet features Jarmusch's 1984 essay "Some Notes on Stranger Than Paradise" as well as critical commentary by Geoff Andrew and J. Hoberman on Stranger Than Paradise and by Luc Sante on Permanent Vacation.

Legacy

Stranger Than Paradise broke many conventions of traditional Hollywood filmmaking, and became a landmark work in modern independent film. According to allmovie, it is "one of the most influential movies of the 1980s", and cast "a wide shadow over the new generation of independent American filmmakers to come. It is cited for giving "an early example of the low-budget independent wave that would dominate the cinematic marketplace a decade later". The success of the film accorded Jarmusch a certain iconic status within arthouse cinema, as an idiosyncratic and uncompromising auteur exuding the aura of urban cool embodied by downtown Manhattan. In a 2005 profile of the director for The New York Times, critic Lynn Hirschberg declared the film to have "permanently upended the idea of independent film as an intrinsically inaccessible avant-garde form".
In 2002, Stranger Than Paradise was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film was included in Jonathan Rosenbaum's Alternate 100, which was a response to the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies list. In 2003, Entertainment Weekly ranked the film #26 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films". Empire Magazine put the film at 14 on its list of the 50 greatest independent films of all time.

Soundtrack

The film features an original soundtrack written by John Lurie, who also stars in the film. The music is performed by The Paradise Quartet, consisting of Jill B. Jaffe, Mary L. Rowell, Kay Stern, and Eugene Moye. The recording engineer for the sessions was Ollie Cotton. The original song "I Put a Spell on You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins features prominently in the soundtrack.

Track listing