Close Up

21 - 24 July 2019: Wings of Desire

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Wings of Desire
Wim Wenders, 1987, 127 min, 12
German, English & French with English subtitles

“My own guardian angel on this film was Claire. She was both the assistant in the American sense…that she would lead the shoot like a military operation, and in a more European tradition she shared all creative issues, fears, and dreams with me.” – Wim wenders

"Angels perched atop the buildings of Berlin listen in on the innermost thoughts of mere mortals in Wim Wenders’s lovely, lyrical Wings of Desire, a soaring high-point of the director’s cinema and a moving, melancholic elegy to a Berlin still divided. Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are brooding, compassionate angels who eavesdrop on the secret pains and fears of ordinary people. When Damiel falls for a beautiful trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin), he renounces his immortality to return to earth as a human, hoping for a love that transcends life in the heavens. The stunning cinematography – crisp black-and-white, lurid Technicolor – is by French great Henri Alekan, whose many credits include Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast." – The Cinematheque


Part of our season on Claire Denis