Sightlines · reception
How Wings of Desire was received
1987 · Wim Wenders · Wings of Desire on Sightlines
The arc
No flop-to-classic arc needed here — it won Wenders Best Director at Cannes in 1987 and was an arthouse event from day one. If anything it's grown more monumental since, as the definitive cinematic portrait of a walled Berlin that vanished two years after the film came out.
What’s debated
The perennial fan fight is the ending — plenty of devotees admit the rapturous black-and-white first half sets a bar the more earthbound final act can't quite hold, while others insist that shift is the whole point.
Its footprint
Hollywood remade it as City of Angels (1998) with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan — a comparison cinephiles have dined out on ever since. The trench-coated angel perched atop Berlin's Victory Column remains one of the most-referenced images in art cinema, and a young Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds playing live in the film is a beloved bonus for music fans.
Where it stands
Firmly canon — a Criterion staple, a Sight & Sound poll regular, and the consensus 'start here' film for anyone getting into Wenders.
Did you know? Cinematographer Henri Alekan, who shot Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast four decades earlier, came out of semi-retirement for the film — and Wenders named the circus in the movie 'Circus Alekan' in his honor.
Named by the director
- Yasujirō Ozu — Wenders dedicated the film 'to all the former angels, but especially to Yasujiro' — Ozu being his most openly worshipped master.
- François Truffaut — Named in the same closing dedication ('François'), one of the three departed directors Wenders called former angels.
- Andrei Tarkovsky — The third 'former angel' of the dedication ('Andrej'), who had died the year before the film's release.