Wings of Desire " Der Himmel Über Berlin" by Wim Wenders

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Wings of Desire

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This article is about the 1987 film. For the Jennifer Rush album, see Wings of Desire (album). For the racehorse, see Wings of Desire (horse).

Wings of Desire
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Wim Wenders
Produced by	Wim Wenders Anatole Dauman
Written by	Wim Wenders Peter Handke Richard Reitinger
Starring	Bruno Ganz Solveig Dommartin Otto Sander Curt Bois Peter Falk
Music by	Jürgen Knieper Laurent Petitgand
Cinematography	Henri Alekan
Edited by	Peter Przygodda
Production company	Road Movies Filmproduktion Argos Films Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Distributed by	Basis-Film-Verleih GmbH (West Germany) Argos Films (France)
Release date	17 May 1987 (Cannes Film Festival) 29 October 1987 (West Germany[1])
Running time	127 minutes[2]
Country	West Germany France
Language	German English French Turkish Hebrew Spanish
Budget	5 million DM[3]
Box office	USD$3.2 million[4]

Wings of Desire (German: Der Himmel über Berlin, lit. 'Heaven Over Berlin') is a 1987 romantic fantasy film directed by Wim Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of its human inhabitants, comforting the distressed. Even though the city is densely populated, many of the people are isolated or estranged from their loved ones. One of the angels, played by Bruno Ganz, falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist, played by Solveig Dommartin. The angel chooses to become mortal so that he can experience human sensory pleasures, ranging from enjoying food to touching a loved one, and so that he can discover human love with the trapeze artist.
Inspired by art depicting angels visible around West Berlin, at the time enclaved by the Berlin Wall, Wenders and author Peter Handke conceived of the story and continued to develop the screenplay throughout the French and German co-production. The film was shot by Henri Alekan in both colour and a sepia-toned black-and-white, the latter being used to represent the world as seen by the angels. The cast includes Otto Sander, Curt Bois and Peter Falk.
For Wings of Desire, Wenders won awards for Best Director at both the Cannes Film Festival and European Film Awards. The film was a critical and financial success, and academics have interpreted it as a statement of the importance of cinema, libraries, the circus, or German unity, containing New Age, religious, secular or other themes.
It was followed by a sequel, Faraway, So Close!, released in 1993. City of Angels, a U.S. remake, was released in 1998. In 1990, numerous critics named Wings of Desire as one of the best films of the 1980s.

Contents

• 1 Plot
• 2 Production
  • 2.1 Development
  • 2.2 Casting
  • 2.3 Filming
  • 2.4 Post-production
• 3 Themes and interpretations
• 4 Style
• 5 Release
• 6 Reception
  • 6.1 Box office
  • 6.2 Critical reception
  • 6.3 Accolades
• 7 Legacy
• 8 See also
• 9 References
  • 9.1 Bibliography
• 10 External links

Plot

In a Berlin divided by the Berlin Wall, two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, watch the city, unseen and unheard by its human inhabitants. They observe and listen to the thoughts of Berliners, including a pregnant woman in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, a young prostitute standing by a busy road, and a broken man who feels betrayed by his wife. Their raison d'être is, as Cassiel says, to "assemble, testify, preserve" reality. Damiel and Cassiel have always existed as angels; they were in Berlin before it was a city, and before there were any humans.
Among the Berliners they encounter in their wanderings is an old man named Homer, who dreams of an "epic of peace". Cassiel follows the old man as he looks for the then-demolished Potsdamer Platz in an open field, and finds only the graffiti-covered Wall. Although Damiel and Cassiel are pure observers, visible only to children, and incapable of any interaction with the physical world, Damiel begins to fall in love with a profoundly lonely circus trapeze artist named Marion. She lives by herself in a caravan in West Berlin, until she receives the news that her group, the Circus Alekan, will be closing down. Depressed, she dances alone to the music of Crime & the City Solution, and drifts through the city.
Meanwhile, actor Peter Falk arrives in West Berlin to make a film about the city's Nazi past. Falk was once an angel, who, having grown tired of always observing and never experiencing, renounced his immortality to become a participant in the world. Also growing weary of infinity, Damiel's longing is for the genuineness and limits of human existence. He meets Marion in a dream, and is surprised when Falk senses his presence and tells him about the pleasures of human life.

The graffiti on the Berlin Wall is depicted in the film.

Damiel is finally persuaded to shed his immortality. He experiences life for the first time: he bleeds, sees colours, tastes food and drinks coffee. Meanwhile, Cassiel taps into the mind of a young man just about to commit suicide by jumping off a building. Cassiel tries to save the young man but is unable to do so, and is left tormented by the experience. Sensing Cassiel's presence, Falk reaches out to him as he had Damiel, but Cassiel is unwilling to follow their example. Eventually, Damiel meets the trapeze artist Marion at a bar during a concert by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and she greets him and speaks about finally finding a love that is serious and can make her feel complete. The next day, Damiel considers how his time with Marion taught him to feel amazed, and how he has gained knowledge no angel is capable of achieving.

Production

Development

Berlin art depicting angels served as an inspiration to the filmmakers.

After living and working in the United States for eight years, director Wim Wenders returned to his native West Germany and wished to reconnect to it with a film about his favourite part of it, West Berlin.^[5] Planning to make Until the End of the World in 1985, he realised the project would not be ready for two years, and wishing to return to photography as soon as possible, he considered another project.^[6]
Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry partially inspired the story. Wenders claimed angels seemed to dwell in Rilke's poetry, and the director had also jotted "angels" in his notes one day,^[7] and noted angel-themed artwork in cemeteries and around Berlin.^[5] In his treatment, Wenders also considered a backstory in which God exiled his angels to Berlin as punishment for defending humans after 1945, when God had decided to forsake them.^[8]
Wenders employed Peter Handke, who wrote much of the dialogue, the poetic narrations, and the film's recurring poem "Song of Childhood".^[9] Wenders found the names Damiel and Cassiel in an encyclopedia about angels, and also had photographs of Solveig Dommartin, Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander that served as muses.^[7] The idea that angels could read minds led to Wenders considering personal dialogue no one would say aloud.^[5] Wenders did not view the angel protagonist as representative of himself, instead deciding the angel could be an embodiment of film, and that the purpose of film could be to help people by opening their eyes to possibilities.^[10] Handke did not feel able to write a single coherent story, but promised to regularly send notes on ideas during production.^[11] Screenwriter Richard Reitinger also assisted Wenders in scripting scenes around Handke's contributions.^[12]
Given the nature of this arrangement, Wenders would hold daily meetings with his crew, frequently at late hours, to plan the logistics for the following day.^[8] French producer Anatole Dauman did not see a large budget as necessary,^[13] and the project was funded with 5 million DM.^[3]