Trailer
Plot summary
The angels Damiel and Cassiel wander West Berlin unseen, listening to the thoughts of the people around them and offering what comfort they can. Damiel grows tired of eternity, of watching without touching, and wishes for the ordinary things of life: a fever, black fingers from reading a newspaper. Among those the angels follow are an old storyteller named Homer, who searches the empty ground where the Potsdamer Platz once stood, and an actor making a film about the city's Nazi past. At the Circus Alekan, the trapeze artist Marion practices alone, and word comes that the circus must close. Lonely and with nowhere to go, she wants someone to love; Damiel, watching her, falls in love.
Cast
- Elmar Wilmsas In weiteren Rollen - Ein trauriger Mann
- Sigurd Rachmanas In weiteren Rollen - Der Selbstmörder
- Bruno Rosazas Im Zirkus - Der Clown
- Laurent Petitgandas Im Zirkus - Der Kapellmeister
Show all 20 cast
- Otto Kuhnleas Im Zirkus - Die Jongleure
- Christoph Mergas Im Zirkus - Der Jongleure
- Peter Werneras The Manager
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Wings of Desire (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During production of Wings of Desire, the filmmakers called German police after actor Peter Falk went missing; he had been spending hours exploring West Berlin and was discovered in a café.
- Cinematographer Henri Alekan shot the angels' monochrome scenes using a very old and fragile silk stocking that had belonged to his grandmother as a filter, to show their muted view of the world.
- Solveig Dommartin, who played the trapeze artist Marion, learned the film's trapeze and rope moves in just eight weeks and did all the risky circus acrobatics herself, without a stunt double.
- A pie fight between the stars was filmed for the final scene of Wings of Desire but was later edited out, as part of cutting five hours of footage down to the final cut.
- The role played by Peter Falk was not planned until photography had already begun: Wenders intended an artist or political official for the part until his assistant Claire Denis suggested the Columbo star would be familiar to everyone.
- Screenwriter Peter Handke arrived in West Berlin during the editing and felt the film bordered on a silent film aside from some music, so he proposed adding his writings as voice-over.
- Composer Jürgen Knieper assumed harps and violins would suffice for a score for a film about angels, until he saw a cut; finding the angels discontented, he wrote a different score with a choir, voices and whistling.
- Wenders' story influenced Tony Kushner's play Angels in America, in which angels intermingle with troubled mortals, and R.E.M.'s music video for "Everybody Hurts" also takes cues from the film.
