Wings of Desire 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, 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 and 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.
| Damiel | Bruno Ganz |
| Marion | Solveig Dommartin |
| Cassiel | Otto Sander |
| Homer | Curt Bois |
| As himself | Peter Falk |
| Director | Wim Wenders |
| Written by | Wim Wenders |
| together with | Peter Handke |
| Director of photography | Henri Alekan |
| Executive producer | Ingrid Windisch |
| Music | Jürgen Knieper |
| Editing | Peter Przygodda |
| Assistant director | Claire Denis |
| Art director | Heidi Lüdi |
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION
January 09, 2017
The glittering surfaces of classic fairy tales often mask undercurrents of emotional torment, spiritual foreboding, and moral transgression. This week, our latest series on the Criterion . . . Read more »
By November 09, 2009
The following essay originally appeared in The Logic of Images, a collection of Wim Wenders’s writing that was published in 1992. In the last few years, since Paris, Texas, Berlin has been the . . . Read more »
By November 03, 2009
If ever there was a European art film that could be all things to all people, it’s Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (1987). Marking Wenders’s career midpoint like a lightning strike cutting across . . . Read more »
By November 02, 2009
The following, written in 1986, is from the first treatment for Wings of Desire. And we, spectators always, everywhere, looking at, never out of, everything! —Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy” At first . . . Read more »
By November 03, 2009
If ever there was a European art film that could be all things to all people, it’s Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (1987). Marking Wenders’s career midpoint like a lightning strike cutting across . . . Read more »
January 09, 2017
The glittering surfaces of classic fairy tales often mask undercurrents of emotional torment, spiritual foreboding, and moral transgression. This week, our latest series on the Criterion . . . Read more »
December 10, 2015
It's been a great seventieth-birthday year for Wim Wenders. After earning an Academy Award nomination for his 2014 documentary The Salt of the Earth, Wenders received an honorary Golden Bear at . . . Read more »
April 19, 2010
Post-Avatar, it seems some of our favorite filmmakers have caught3-D fever. Just in the past week, it’s been confirmed that Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, and Werner Herzog will soon be getting . . . Read more »
November 16, 2009
Interview magazine’s Darrell Hartman is just one of many critics heralding the release of Wings of Desire in Criterion Blu-ray and DVD special editions: “Rilke-inspired interior monologues; . . . Read more »
By November 09, 2009
The following essay originally appeared in The Logic of Images, a collection of Wim Wenders’s writing that was published in 1992. In the last few years, since Paris, Texas, Berlin has been the . . . Read more »
By November 03, 2009
If ever there was a European art film that could be all things to all people, it’s Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (1987). Marking Wenders’s career midpoint like a lightning strike cutting across . . . Read more »
By November 02, 2009
The following, written in 1986, is from the first treatment for Wings of Desire. And we, spectators always, everywhere, looking at, never out of, everything! —Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy” At first . . . Read more »
October 14, 2009
Seekers of Criterion behind-the-scenes tidbits, take note! Our own Susan Arosteguy speaks with the travel and culture website Museyon Guides in a two-part interview about our upcoming special . . . Read more »
2 Discs
SRP: $39.95
Criterion Store price:$31.96
