In 1987, director Wim Wenders’ enchanting and brooding Wings of Desire came out, and it was a cinematic revelation. In the film, two male angels are among the heavenly denizens who wander the black and white streets of Berlin, a city divided by communism, as they quietly survey people feeling hopeless about their lives. There are scenes showing striking landscapes and architecture with gorgeous, haunting music as the angels listen to the inner monologues of the citizens they are watching over. Although having an invisible, quiet presence, the angels sometimes lay a hand on someone’s shoulder to quietly offer comfort amid this emotionally distraught landscape.
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The main angel in the story, Damiel (Bruno Ganz), becomes smitten with a beautiful trapeze performer named Marion (Solveig Dommartin). There is an interesting bit of symbolism in that when she’s doing her act she dresses in angel’s wings as if she is trying to to ascend to someplace higher. Yet in his passion to be with her Damiel could ultimately descend from the heavens and lose his immortality.
Just a quick warning for those who have not seen the film: Spoilers lie ahead.
An Eclectic Soundtrack
Wings of Desire features a beguiling soundtrack of atmospheric pieces, modern classical music, and some rock tracks. It also includes two songs from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and one song from Crime and the City Solution, all of which appear as live performances in a nightclub where Damiel watches Marion. The Crime and the City Solution song “Six Bells Chime” is a hazy, gothic track that Marion sways to. One of the Nick Cave songs, “The Carny,” is done live and also gets played when Marion puts on the album it’s from while in her dressing room. The other, “From Her to Eternity,” shows up right after “The Carny” during a dramatic concert performance in one of the film’s final scenes in the aforementioned club. Cave’s music at the end was informed by a special mixture of goth, blues, and post-punk sounds.
What’s interesting here is that singer Nick Cave had originally been in an Australian post-punk group called The Birthday Party in Australia that released four albums between 1977 and 1983. They later relocated to London and then Berlin by 1982. Once The Birthday Party broke up, Cave, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey, and bassist Barry Adamson started Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Harvey also formed Crime and the City Solution with guitarist Roland S. Howard. Both groups stayed in Berlin in the mid- to late-1980s, which is how they caught Wenders’ attention and ended up in the movie. Industrial fans take note: Einstürzende Neubauten frontman Blixa Bargeld played guitar with the Bad Seeds at the time. (And Columbo fans take note: Peter Falk has a comedic part in the film as an ex-angel who communicates with Damiel even though he cannot see him.)
Wenders: Cave Symbolized Berlin’s Spirit
In a 2022 interview with the British Film Institute (BFI), Wenders explained how Cave got involved with the movie.
“He’s a great singer,” Wenders said. “He is a masterful poet now, and one of the great living singers. I’m a subscriber to his Q&A web-dialogue ‘The Red Hand Files’—I love them. At the time, of course, he was more of a rebel. His image was quite rowdy: The Bad Seeds only lived at night, and they were heavily into drugs. I saw them so often in the middle of the night; they never played before midnight, or let’s say before two o’clock. If you wanted to talk to Nick, you had to go to a certain bar at three o’clock at night; then he might show up. I finally got hold of him and he liked my proposition. Making a movie in Berlin at that time without Nick Cave was a sin of omission. He really symbolised the spirit of the city. Adventurous, dark, unique. That was Berlin. Nick was gorgeous, and we struck up a friendship.”
Club Angst
The angst-ridden Cave track “From Her To Eternity” plays a key role at the end of the film.
I read her diary on her sheets
Scrutinizing every little bit of dirt
Tore out a page and stuffed it inside my shirt
I fled outta the window
And shinning it down the vine
Outta her nightmare
And back into mine
Mine, oh mine
From her to eternity
From her to eternity
Cry, cry, cry
Cry, cry, cry
There’s a voyeuristic and disturbing quality to the lyrics of “From Her to Eternity”—they zero in on how obsession and uncontrolled passion have a dark side and can lead one down unsettling rabbit holes—but they actually do connect with the scene that’s going to be playing out in the bar next in the concert hall. Damiel has been invisibly, silently watching Marion and become fascinated with the idea of meeting her. This doesn’t play out as stalker-ish as it sounds—his true love for her ultimately leads him to abandon life as an angel and to become mortal without even knowing if she will like him. His romantic interest in Marion feels like it is of a more naive nature—he is also pulled in by her deep, passionate thoughts. After Damiel’s transition to mortality, the film shifts from black and white to color.
But the intensity of “From Her to Eternity” also matches the intense undercurrent of what is playing out in that scene. Damiel has become human. What happens if she’s not interested or rejects him? Will the sacrifice have been worth it? When she approaches him, she seems to instinctively know who he is. But will she connect with him?
An Immortal Classic
Wings Of Desire remains one of the best films of the 1980s, if not one of the best of all time. It also introduced many Americans to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It tapped into the Berlin zeitgeist of the time and left a good record of that vibe. It’s also a beautiful love story.
A 2021 feature from Far Out magazine quoted Wenders as saying: “Making a film in Berlin, for me, was almost synonymous with having [Nick Cave and Roland S. Howard] appear in it because they were cutting edge, and they were grunge before anybody knew the word for it. That was where Berlin was.”
When asked by BFI if he would ever work with Cave again, Wenders replied, “Any time. I would do anything to work with Nick again and we will. I hope.”
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Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Coachella
