Trailer
Plot summary
Seth moves unseen among the people of Los Angeles with other angels, appearing to those close to death to guide them on. He and his fellow angel Cassiel ask the dying what they love most in life, though angels have no human senses and struggle to understand human ways. While waiting to escort a man through heart surgery, Seth watches surgeon Maggie Rice fight to save him and feels her anguish when she fails. He becomes fixed on her and makes himself visible, and a connection grows into mutual attraction, though Maggie is involved with a colleague, Jordan Ferris. She is intrigued by his presence and by what he tells her about death.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about City of Angels (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- City of Angels displaced Lost in Space at the top of the box office, which had itself been first for only one week after overtaking Titanic; Titanic, first for 15 weeks, ranked third behind the two of them.
- For the angel scenes shot at Malibu Beach the angels were given briefly visible footprints, even though they are not physical beings, to avoid the perception that the sand was too hard to leave imprints; John Nelson then erased them soon after they appear.
- Brad Silberling and Nicolas Cage noticed their project followed other angel films, Michael and The Preacher's Wife, both released in 1996; unimpressed by those, the pair drew angel wings in the City of Angels screenplay to mark the parts they felt needed improvement.
SPOILER
The remake altered the ending of the original so that Maggie is killed, a less happy conclusion; Brad Silberling equated this to a scene in Wings of Desire where the angel protagonist goes to the side of a motorcyclist near death.- Producer Dawn Steel's company approached Wim Wenders in 1989 for the rights to adapt his 1987 film Wings of Desire, but production was delayed as Steel took the project to The Walt Disney Company and Turner Entertainment before finally settling at Warner Bros. Pictures.
- The film's Los Angeles debut at Mann Theatres on April 8, 1998 was a benefit screening for the Dawn Steel Putting Girls in the Picture Fund, held in honor of Steel, who had died in December 1997.
