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Wings of Desire

Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire)

1987

Wim Wenders

Bruno Ganz, Peter Falk, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander ...

7.3

15,545

Drama. Fantasy The sky over Wenders' war-scarred Berlin is full of gentle, trenchcoated angels who listen to the tortured thoughts of mortals and try to comfort them. One, Damiel (Bruno Ganz), wishes to become mortal after falling in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, Marion (Solveig Dommartin). Peter Falk, as himself, assists in the transformation by explaining the simple joys of a human experience, such as the sublime combination of coffee and ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times	"The film evokes a mood of reverie, elegy and meditation (...) For me, the film is like music or a landscape: It clears a space in my mind, and in that space I can consider questions (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United Kingdom	Ian Nathan Empire	"Wim Wenders (...) create[s] this precious portrait of a divided Berlin just a few years before the Wall fell and it remains a beautiful, literate and romantic piece of cinema (...) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
Canada	Shelagh Rowan-Legg Screen Anarchy	"[It] is truly an experience"	POS
United States	Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"'Wings of Desire' is one of Wenders's most stunning achievements, certainly in no way replaceable by City of Angels, the ludicrous 1998 Hollywood remake"	POS
United States	Bill Weber Slant	"It's hard to think of another film of its era that makes the viewer so fully feel like a denizen of its setting. Indeed, [its] roving, dollying, craning camera makes angels of us all (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"Startlingly original at first, 'Wings of Desire' is in the end damagingly overloaded. The excesses of language, the ceaseless camera movement, the unyielding whimsy have the ultimate effect of wearing the audience down."	NEU
United Kingdom	Time Out	"Masterpiece? Maybe not, but few films are so rich, so intriguing, or so ambitious."	POS
United States	Mike Flaherty Entertainment Weekly	"A romance, fairy tale, and existential rumination as well as a love letter to Cold War Berlin"	POS
United States	Rita Kempley The Washington Post	"[Wenders] and cowriter Peter Handke created a whimsical realm of myth and philosophical pretense, dense with imagery and sweetened by Ganz's performance."	POS
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"This intensely romantic story of an angel who longs for human love is unlike any other (...) A cinema of ideas, almost an essay movie, and utterly distinctive (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

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