In the White City

One of the key works of eighties European cinema, Tanner’s poem/film in praise of solitude and the flâneur finally finds a protagonist able to happily unmoor himself from work and consumerist obligation, and to instead spend time “sleeping, walking, dreaming,” here amidst the atmospheric streets and docks of Lisbon. Bruno Ganz (never more charming) stars as the sailor who leaves his ship to be “not at work, and not on vacation . . . adrift somewhere between space and time” in this gorgeous port town. Improvised on site without a script, Tanner’s most liberated work finds the director, like his protagonist, allowing the city to shape his reactions.