Wings of Desire [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Wim Wenders, Anatole Dauman Wim Wenders

Overview

"There are angels on the streets of Berlin" in Wim Wenders' beautiful and evocative masterpiece (co-written with Peter Handke), a melancholy and meditative contemplation of human life and emotion as seen through the eyes of two angels -- Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander). Angels are unseen witnesses to human affairs and hover over human beings -- listening to their thoughts, lending comfort to the despairing, providing hope to the dying. To adults they cannot be seen, but children can feel their unseen presence. Angels can listen but cannot interfere in any way with human affairs. Damiel and Cassiel are two of the many angels who have witnessed the state of human affairs in Berlin. Having performed their labors since the inception of mankind, Damiel and Cassiel are growing a bit weary of their tasks. Damiel, perhaps, a bit more so: "Instead of hovering, I'd like to feel some weight on me," he says to Cassiel. The two angels latch on to two kindred souls among the multitude of cacophonous voices in Berlin. Cassiel finds himself returning to Homer (Curt Bois), an aged writer whose readers have abandoned him and who no longer writes. Damiel is attracted to svelte and beautiful French trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), who also finds herself alone and without an audience when her circus folds. When the angels walk around a movie set, Peter Falk (playing himself) senses their presence, "I can't see you, but I know you're here." Speaking to the unseen (by him) Damiel, he seduces him to the delights of being alive, "To smoke, and have coffee. And if you do it together . . . it's fantastic." Damiel, who has fallen in love with Marion, decides to take the plunge to pain, sadness, and death and become a human being, Cassiel observing it all from atop a looming statue. Now a human being, Damiel must somehow find Marion and express his love to her.

Product Details

Release Date:	11/03/2009
UPC:	0715515046411
Original Release:	1987
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	Criterion Collection
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	2:07:00
Sales rank:	9,730

Special Features

Audio Commentary featuring Wenders and Actor Peter Falk - The Angels Among Us (2003), A Documentary Featuring Interviews with Wenders, Falk, Actors Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander, Writer Peter Handke, and Composer Jürgen Knieper - "Wim Wenders Berlin Jan. 87," from an episode of the French television program Cinéma cinémas, including on-set and outtakes _ Excerpts from the film Alekan la Lumière (1985) and Ganz and Sander's Remembrance: Film for Curt Bois (1982) ; Notes and Photos by Art Directors Heidi and Toni Lüdi; Trailers; New and improved English Translation

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Bruno Ganz	Damiel
Otto Sander	Cassiel
Solveig Dommartin	Marion
Curt Bois	Homer
Beatrice Manowski	Das Strichmädchen
Peter Falk	Himself
Annelinde Gerstl	Sie
Laurent Petitgand	Actor
Chick Ortega	Actor
Hans Stier	The Dying Man
Lajos Kovács	Marion's coach
Peter Werner	Manager
Paul Busch	Circus
Didier Flamand	Angel at the library
Olivier Picot	Air-raid shelter
Dirk Vogeley	On the highway
Mick Harvey	Crime & the city solution
Nick Cave	Himself
Blixa Bargeld	Member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Patrick Kreuzer	Actor
Ulrike Schirm	Actor
Jürgen Knieper	Composer
Jurgen Kneiper	Composer

Technical Credits

Wim Wenders

Peter Handke

Wim Wenders	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Peter Handke	Screenwriter
Anatole Dauman	Producer,Director
Ingrid Windisch	Executive Producer,Producer
Anatole Daumon	Producer

Editorial Reviews

Unconventional angels in gray overcoats wander West Berlin in German director Wim Wenders's magnificent Wings of Desire. Scripted by Wenders and German novelist Peter Handke, Wings of Desire follows two angels, Daniel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander), as Daniel struggles with his desire to take the plunge into earthly existence, inspired by his attraction to a beautiful French trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin). Peter Falk appears in the film too, playing himself in a most unusual performance. The angels can hear the thoughts of everyone around them, and the disparate voices recounting their private agonies and hopes form a poetic aural collage. Jürgen Knieper provides the gorgeous original score, supplemented with onscreen musical performances by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Crime and the City Solution. In three languages -- German, French, and English -- with both color and sumptuous black-and-white sequences courtesy of legendary cinematographer Henri Alekan, Wings of Desire is at once charming, profound, tragic, and joyous

Barnes & Noble - Gregory Baird

After seven years in the U.S., New German Cinema director Wim Wenders returned to Germany for this meditation on existence, mortality, time, and Berlin, the city in which it is set. Co-written with frequent collaborator Peter Handke, the odyssey of two guardian angels becomes a means for Wenders to examine poetically the fractured "soul" of the still-divided Berlin. Mixing black-and-white and color, and aerial photography with street-level shooting, Wenders contrasts the contemplative distance of the angels with the emotional vicissitudes of daily life. Damiel's desire to trade his wings for a chance at full-color human romance with a circus performer becomes a descent into a forward-moving present that threatens pain as well as potential joy. The fall of the Berlin Wall only two years later makes Wings of Desire seem more prescient than obsolete. Praised for its imaginative lyricism, the film won Wenders the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival; the 1993 sequel Faraway, So Close was not as well-received, and the film was Hollywoodized as City of Angels in 1998.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola