Wings of Desire [Der Himmel über Berlin] ***** (1987, Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, Curt Bois, Peter Falk) – Classic Movie Review 104

Following up his 1984 international art-house hit Paris, Texas, German director Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire [Der Himmel über Berlin] is an acclaimed essay on modern-day spirituality, observing the inhabitants’ failings and painstaking progress in the city of Berlin. It won him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987.

Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander star as angels Damiel and Cassiel who, invisible to humanity, peer down on a Berlin divided between East and West and suffering from postwar scars, offering their help to lost souls.

Ganz’s Damiel is eventually so moved by what he sees that, spurred on by his love for trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), he abandons his heavenly form to join the earthlings in their tangible, bread-and-butter existence.

In a screenplay he writes with Peter Handke, Wenders weaves his themes and characters together with fluid grace and shows real compassion for the damaged members of the human race. Yet some patience is required, though it will be rewarded. Despite Wenders’s consummate film-making skills, the lengthy movie of 128 minutes feels like an epic and sometimes moves at a crawl and never quite flies free of its weighty concerns.

All the same, Der Himmel über Berlin is an extraordinary film that deserves close attention. It is uniquely poetic, with gorgeous cinematography in human-sight colour (Eastmancolor) and angel-view black and white by Henri Alekan (winning the 1988 New York Film Critics award as Best Cinematographer), intense tunes by Nick Cave and a performance of exquisite, minimalist subtlety from Columbo star Peter Falk as Der Filmstar (basically himself).

Revisiting a totally changed Berlin, Wenders filmed a sequel in 1993: Faraway, So Close! [In Weiter Ferne, so Nah!], again with Ganz and Sander as angels Damiel and Cassiel, plus Dommartin and Falk.

RIP Bruno Ganz, the acclaimed Swiss-born film and theatre actor, best known for playing the angel Damiel in Wenders’s Wings of Desire (1987) and Adolf Hitler in the Oscar-nominated Downfall (2004), who died on 15 February 2019, aged 77.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 104

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