Wings of Desire (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
![Wings of Desire (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]](/images/Wings-of-Desire-The-Criterion-Collection-Blu-ray-B002IVDLGE-L.jpg)
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Blu-ray details
Actor: Bruno Ganz, Curt Bois, Otto Sander, Peter Falk, Solveig DommartinBrand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Henri Alékan
Composer: Jürgen Knieper
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); German (Original Language); English (Dubbed); French (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 127 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2009-11-03
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Criterion Collection
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: Blu-ray
- AC-3; Color; DTS Surround Sound; Dubbed; Special Edition; Subtitled; Widescreen
Blu-ray Reviews of Wings of Desire (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Blu-ray Review: A film that nearly overwhelms me each time I see it
Summary: 5 Stars
No movie that I see on a regular basis makes me feel so powerfully the joy of being alive as this one. Although many films and numberless and sappy television shows since 1987 have used angels of one dreadful sort or another, Wim Wenders managed to success while all the others failed. Working from a story by celebrated writer Peter Handke, Wenders takes angels that seem to have more in common with Rilke's Duino Elegies than the Bible or the New Age angels. Their function is to watch and observe and record, and in their own limited fashion, to comfort and commiserate. The trick wasn't to come up with the gimmick of angels being able to listen to the thoughts of humans, but to make those thoughts beautiful and representative of all that is quintessentially human. The trick wasn't to have the angels see in black and white and the humans in color, but in making what was seen, whether two or many toned, beautiful. One has only to see the absolutely appalling CITY OF ANGELS, an English language remake starring Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage, to see that having gimmicks isn't enough; you must have substance as well.
This is not a perfect film. There are some dull moments, and I thoroughly dislike a couple of moments in the film, in particular, Dommartin's speech to Bruno Ganz in the bar near the end of the film. But there are so many magnificent moments, so many moments where they not merely get something right, but produce a moment of almost transcendent beauty, that WINGS OF DESIRE provides more than entertainment, but something akin to a reason to live. The movie becomes in the end a celebration of life, of all the tawdry elements that go into being human. The movie ends in affirming nearly as many things as Walt Whitman does in "Song of Myself."
I love the cast. Bruno Ganz is perfect as Damiel, the central angel of the story. Likewise, Otto Sander's face is the perfect receptacle for all that he witnesses on his silent rounds through Berlin, while Solveig Dommartin is so sympathetic a character, so lovely, that one could imagine an angel or anyone else yearning to be with her. And Peter Falk turns in a remarkably quirky character role, playing himself on location in Berlin. The city itself emerges as a major actor, providing what is certain to stand as the last great visual representation of Berlin in the last couple of years before the Wall fell. Curt Bois was a veteran character actor who was a staple in Hollywood films in the 1930s and 1940s, playing a vast number of waiters and tailors and hotel clerks (he plays the pickpocket at the very beginning of CASABLANCA). In what would be the last role before his death, Bois appropriately plays "Homer," the ancient man remembering all that had occurred in Berlin in the past several decades, playing the role of human witness to counterbalance the angelic witnesses.
This film and UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD, a Wenders film that followed this one in 1991 have to have two of the best soundtracks I have encountered. Subtract either "Six Bells Chime" by Crime and the City Solution or "From Her to Eternity" by Nick Cave, and this would have been far less of a film, and the scene where Solveig Dommartin changes in her trailer while listening to Nick Cave do "The Carny" might be the best scene in the film.
Description of Wings of Desire (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) is one of cinema?s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts?fears, hopes, and dreams?of all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he is willing to give up his immortality to come back to earth to be with her. Made not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this stunning tapestry of sounds and images, shot in black and white and color by the legendary Henri Alekan, is movie poetry. And it forever made the name Wim Wenders synonymous with film art.DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
? New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Wim Wenders with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack ? Audio commentary featuring Wenders and actor Peter Falk ? The Angels Among Us (2003), a documentary featuring interviews with Wenders, Falk, actors Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander, writer Peter Handke, and composer Jürgen Knieper ? Excerpt from: Wim Wenders Berlin Jan. 87, an episode of the French television program Cinéma cinémas, including on-set footage ? Interview with director of photography Henri Alekan ? Deleted scenes and outtakes ? Excerpts from the films Alekan la lumière (1985) and Remembrance: Film for Curt Bois (about the actor who plays Homer in Wings of Desire) ? Notes and photos by production designer Heidi Lüdi and art director Toni Lüdi ? Trailers ? New and improved English subtitle translation ? PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Atkinson and writings by Wenders and Handke
"There are angels over the streets of Berlin," quotes the movie poster, but these are like no angels you've ever seen. Bundled in dark overcoats, they watch over the city with ears open to the heartbeat of the human soul, listening to the internal musings and yearnings of earthbound humans like existential detectives. In these delicate, astounding scenes we float through the thoughts of dozens Berlin citizens, from the weary and worn to the hopeful and young, as the angels record the magic moments for some heavenly record. But when Damiel (the empathic and sensitive Bruno Ganz) falls in love with an angel of another sort, the lonely trapeze artist Marion (willowy, sad-eyed Solveig Dommartin), he gives up the contemplation and observation of life to experience it himself.
Wim Wenders's most purely romantic film is like poetry on celluloid, a celebration of the transient and fragile moments of being human: the warmth of a cup of coffee on a cold day, the embrace of a friend, the touch of a lover, the rapture of love. Opening with an angel's-eye view of Berlin in silvery black and white (delicately captured by the great cinematographer Henri Alekan, who photographed Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast 40 years earlier), it transforms into a gauzy color world when Damiel "crosses over" by sheer will. Peter Falk plays himself as a fallen angel with a special sensitivity for celestial visitors ("I can't see you, but I know you're there," he proclaims), and Otto Sander, whose smiling eyes brighten a face etched by eons of waiting and watching, is Damiel's partner. Wenders made a sequel in 1993, Faraway, So Close, and Hollywood remade the film as City of Angels with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. --Sean Axmaker
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