10 / 10
Wings of Desire is Wim Wenders’s 1987 German fantasy drama and one of the strongest films in the director’s filmography. Bruno Ganz plays Damiel, an angel who has observed Berlin and its inhabitants across centuries without direct engagement. Otto Sander plays his fellow angel Cassiel. Solveig Dommartin plays Marion, a French trapeze artist whose presence draws Damiel toward considering mortality. The screenplay was written by Wenders, Peter Handke, and Richard Reitinger. The film was produced by Argos Films and Road Movies Filmproduktion and released in Germany in September 1987.
The film works as fantasy drama and as study in the conditions of mortal engagement. The work refuses the elaborate plot mechanics that fantasy cinema typically deploys. The narrative is structurally simple. Two angels observe Berlin and the divided city’s inhabitants. One angel chooses mortality. The structural simplicity allows the film to develop atmospheric content at depth that more elaborate plots wouldn’t permit. The work establishes a distinct visual tone through alternating black-and-white sequences depicting angelic perception and color sequences depicting human perception. The visual differentiation carries serious argumentative weight.
The Visual Approach
The film’s visual approach alternates between black-and-white cinematography for angelic perception and color cinematography for human perception. The angels perceive the world in monochrome. The humans perceive in color. The transitions between modes work without explicit signaling. The audience tracks the perceptual position through the visual tone itself instead of through stated commentary. The technique establishes distinct visual vocabulary that supports the wider argument about mortal versus angelic perception.
The cinematography by Henri Alekan works at the highest level of black-and-white practice. Alekan had previously shot Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (1946) and brought particular monochrome vocabulary from that earlier work into the contemporary German setting. The angelic black-and-white sequences treat Berlin’s particular architecture, the divided city’s spatial geography, and the inhabitants’ physical environments with documentary attention combined with formal compositional discipline. The color sequences work at warmer tones that suggest human emotional possibility against the angelic detachment.
For Writers
Visual or formal alternation can carry argumentative weight that single-tone approaches can’t support. Wings of Desire alternates between monochrome and color to develop arguments about perceptual modes. This applies to fiction. Consider whether your work benefits from formal alternation or from consistent tone. Alternation requires careful preparation to support the transitions. The investment can produce work that single-tone approaches can’t match.
The Ganz Performance
Bruno Ganz’s performance as Damiel works through sustained restraint that the angelic premise requires. The character can’t directly engage with the mortal humans he observes. The performance must develop the angel’s gradual decision to become mortal through accumulated particular observation instead of through dramatic peaks. Ganz establishes the angel’s interior through micro-expressions, distinct physical engagement with the Berlin environment, and disciplined gestural economy.
The performance also engages with particular philosophical content that the screenplay develops. Damiel desires mortal experience including physical sensation, emotional engagement, and the capacity for accidental error that angelic perfection prevents. The actor traces the development of this desire across the runtime through accumulated particular moments instead of through stated philosophical argument. Performance can carry philosophical content through depicted behavior instead of through expositional treatment. The work is a foundational text for philosophical cinema that works through performance instead of through dialogue.
For Writers
Performance technique can carry philosophical content through depicted behavior instead of through expositional treatment. Wings of Desire develops Damiel’s philosophical position through Ganz’s accumulated particular work. This applies to fiction. Consider whether your philosophical content works through stated arguments or through depicted behavior. Behavioral development of philosophical positions produces deeper reader engagement than stated arguments alone. The reader who arrives at the position through behavioral observation holds the position differently than the reader who’s told the position.
The Berlin Setting
The film sits within particular divided Berlin setting that the work’s broader argument requires. The Berlin Wall, the particular architectural environment, the cultural divisions between East and West, and the historical weight of twentieth-century German experience all inform the depicted dramatic situation. The setting carries documentary value alongside its dramatic function. The film captures Berlin’s particular 1987 conditions before the 1989 Wall fall transformed the city considerably.
The setting also functions as visual character. The cinematography uses Berlin’s particular urban density, its distinctive architecture, and its distinct cultural locations as integral dramatic elements. The famous library sequences work against the city’s particular architectural character in ways that no other urban setting could replicate. Particular urban settings can carry historical and dramatic weight that generic urban settings can’t match. The film has acquired additional documentary value as Berlin’s later transformation has rendered the particular 1987 conditions historical.
For Writers
Specific settings carry historical and dramatic weight that generic settings can’t match. Wings of Desire captures 1987 Berlin with specificity that’s acquired documentary value as the city has transformed. This applies to fiction. Consider whether your settings carry historical specificity that may acquire additional value over time. The investment in setting specificity often produces work that ages into additional cultural value as the depicted conditions become historical.
Craft Note
Wenders’s collaboration with screenwriter Peter Handke required careful preparation in how to integrate Handke’s poetic prose with the visual approach the film required. The screenplay includes extended angelic monologues that develop philosophical content through prose poetry instead of through conventional dialogue. The integration of this material with the visual approach required careful pacing that allowed the prose to work without overwhelming the visual content. The completed film works because the director and screenwriter developed methods for combining their distinct contributions. The lesson applies to creative collaboration broadly.
Strong individual contributors require working methods that allow their distinct contributions to combine instead of to compete. The investment in integration methods pays off in work that no single contributor could have produced alone.
Is Wings of Desire as good as people say?
Wings of Desire is one of the strongest films in Wim Wenders’s filmography and one of the principal accomplishments of postwar German cinema. The visual approach develops arguments about perceptual modes through formal alternation between monochrome and color. The Ganz performance carries philosophical content through depicted behavior instead of through expositional treatment. The Berlin setting carries historical and dramatic weight that’s acquired additional documentary value as the city has transformed.
The work is essential viewing for audiences interested in German cinema, in Wim Wenders, in philosophical cinema, or in films that combine fantasy elements with distinct historical engagement. The film rewards repeated viewing across decades.
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The Craft Behind It
This film appears on one of my film lists
