Film Screening
Wings of Desire

70 Years of German Films

Wed, 09/11/2024
6:45 PM ByTowne Cinema

The anniversary film series shows some of the most successful German films of the last seven decades.

WINGS OF DESIRE

Himmel über Berlin 
Director: Wim Wenders
Year: 1987
Runtime: 128 min
Screenplay: Wim Wenders, Peter Handke, Richard Reitinger
Cinematography: Henri Alekan
Editors: Peter Przygodda
Cast: Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, Curt Bois, Peter Falk

Festivals and Awards
Cannes International Film Festival 1987 – Golden Palm (Best Director); European Film Award 1988 (Best Director, Best Supporting Actor: Curt Bois)

“I believe that places invent stories and ensure that they are told“. - Wim Wenders has given his work and his vision of cinema itself the right heading with this quote. His cinema is one of topography. His films are maps with emotions, in grand images and with a unique soundtrack. Sometimes they are taking us along the former border between the two Germanies, other times it’s to Wuppertal, and then it’s to Los Angeles, Tokyo or Texas.

During his journey of discovery through a long lost Berlin, he allowed himself the liberty of occasionally being transported away on the angels’ wings from the rough ground of the (still) divided city that only appears in black and white.

In 1987, Wenders not only anticipated the opening of a brutal border that was deemed impossible at the time, yet became reality two years later. He paid tribute in the style of a poetic realism understood and loved around the world to a city that also used this border in a creative way in its western half. At the same time, he acknowledges the history of cinema in his characteristically cheeky way with the appearances of the theatre star and formerly exiled actor Curt Bois (“Casablanca“) and Peter Falk as a representative of the New Hollywood movement.

Shot by the legendary French cinematographer Henri Alekan (ORPHEUS, ROMAN HOLIDAY, RED SUN), the film focuses on the guardian angels Cassiel and Damiel (Otto Sander and Bruno Ganz). The film provides some good arguments for wanting to do this. Like love, for example.

The love for love, the love for life, the love for a city that also always is and was a process, a place searching for itself, are the essence of the magic for a film that doesn’t just speak about the love for cinema because it is itself still looking for shooting locations. Moving Pictures – the images really are in motion in Wim Wenders’ films.