“Right on the edge”: Europe’s westernmost hotel and Wim Wenders' “The State of Things”

Abstract

With its lobby located at 38°49'2"N and 9°28'32"W, the Arribas Hotel at Portugal’s Praia Grande is Europe’s most occidental purpose-built hotel facility. It was the stage for the shooting of The State of Things, which the director Wim Wenders started 40 years ago and premiered at the 1982 Venice Film Festival. This work, by the Düsseldorf-born director, is a “movie-within-a-movie” which portrays a film crew that is making a sci-fi film called The Survivors in the Sintra-Lisbon, but run out of money and film-stock, and become stranded in the derelict hotel where they are quartered. In the film, a monologue by the character Robert (Geoffrey Carey), set inside a motel bedroom, echoes Wenders’ attraction to the location.