The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“Few films are so rich, so intriguing, or so ambitious.”

Geoff Andrew, Time Out

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 the then-still-divided German city. 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. Wenders won Best Director honours at Cannes.