Wings of Desire

Director: Wim Wenders, Wim Wenders, Wim Wenders, Wim Wenders, Wim Wenders, Wim Wenders, Wim Wenders

1987 / 128min / 35mm

Invisible trenchcoated guardian angels watch over beleaguered Berliners from on high in Wenders’s soaring city symphony, which follows one of them, Daniel (Bruno Ganz), as he sacrifices his immortality for a chance at love with lonesome trapeze artist Solveig Dommartin, learning the pains and pleasures of human existence from ex-angel Peter Falk. Shot by DP Henri Alekan in sepia monochrome and color, respectively representing the angelic and mortal views of the city, Wenders’s German homecoming following an American interlude would become one of his most beloved films. “Evokes a mood of reverie, elegy, and meditation… of sadness and isolation, of yearning, of the transience of earthly things.”—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times