WENDERS RETURNED TO A STILL DIVIDED GERMANY TO MAKE THIS BEAUTIFUL FILM, WHICH WON HIM THE PRIZE FOR ‘BEST DIRECTOR’ AT THE 1987 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL.
The original title translates as The Sky over Berlin, and the film is an imaginative portrait of the city as seen through the eyes of two angels. Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) keep a benign watch over Berlin and are intimately acquainted with the history of the city as well as the thoughts of its citizens. Their presence is brilliantly captured by veteran cinematographer Henri Alekan, whose fluid camera tracks and glides in appropriately mysterious ways as it accompanies the angels silently observing and comforting the troubled mortals. The angels discover the simple pleasures of physical existence, with Damiel becoming fully human through his love for Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a beautiful trapeze artist who performs her own flying act in a travelling circus. There’s also the vivid presence of American screen icon Peter Falk, playing an ex-angel who’s making a movie about Germany’s Nazi past.