Wings of Desire - (Camden House German Film Classics) by Christian Rogowski (Paperback)

About the Book

A guide through the many aspects of Wenders's groundbreaking film, employing archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings.

Book Synopsis

A guide through the many aspects of Wenders's groundbreaking film, employing archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings.

Filmed in 1986/87 in still-divided Berlin, Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire is both a utopian fairy tale and a fascinating time capsule of that late Cold War moment. Together with legendary French cinematographer Henri Alekan(who had worked on Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête of 1946, among many other films) and Austrian author Peter Handke (with whom he had collaborated before), Wenders created a multilayered filmic poem of dazzling complexity: the skies over Berlin are populated with angels bearing witness to its inhabitants' everyday concerns. One falls in love with a beautiful young woman, a trapeze artist in a traveling circus, and decides to forfeit his immortality. Wenders's groundbreaking film has been hailed as a paean to love, a rumination on the continued presence in Berlin of the troubled German history, as well as an homage to the life-affirming power of the cinematic imagination.Christian Rogowski guides the reader through the film's many aspects, using archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings.

Christian Rogowski is G. Armour Craig Professor in Language andLiterature in the Department of German at Amherst College.

Review Quotes

[Rogowski] is able to name what it is that makes the film so original, provocative, and daring. . . . Rogowski's book is among the best writing on Wenders's "transcendental 'buddy movie.'"--Jörn Glasenapp "MEDIENwissenschaft"

[A] careful treatment . . . . Throughout this volume, criticisms of Wings of Desire are acknowledged yet the reader is convincingly reminded of its many strengths.--Jeanne Schueller "MONATSHEFTE"

Christian Rogowski examines Wim Wenders's [film] through the lens of its status as a problematic icon of international cinema. . . . Rogowski supports his central argument that Wings of Desire is a philosophical and aesthetic treatise on the human condition with references to Wenders's other films; contemporary works of German, French, and American film; and a deep examination of the film's unique history, steeped in interdisciplinary collaboration, poetry, and music.--Noah Soltau "GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW"