About human beings, only different: Solveig Dommartin in “Wings of Desire”

Solveig Dommartin in “Der Himmel über Berlin”, 1987

“The scene with Peter Falk and Bruno Ganz at the kiosk, in that light, with the coffee, the cigarette, the notebook is a scene I have lived – ‘I can’t see you, but I know you’re there,’” photographer Bill Phelps confessed to me in one of our conversations. We bonded over Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, the film weaving its way into our conversations in the most natural way, just as we pick up the special connection we have forged from where we left off as old friends do, when we were bouncing ideas on a presentation he had kindly asked me to write for his exhibition VISITOR. The name Bill chose for his exhibition, “Visitor”, immediately made me think of Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), one of the films that made a lasting impression on me.

There are angels hovering over Berlin and walk unnoticed among its citizens, seen only by other angels and occasionally by children. They listen to people’s thoughts and, at times, they take an active role of guardian angels assisting those in need, stirring feelings of comfort, hope and optimism in them. The human drama fascinates Damiel (Bruno Ganz), one of the angels, and he yearns to touch, taste, and feel, and experience the ephemeral moments of simple joys. Wandering around, he finds his own angel at the circus: Marion (Solveig Dommartin). She’s a trapeze artist, and, for her, he takes a monumental decision. But that is not what left that lasting impression on me. It is the belief that Bill was talking about. It’s the fact that of all human beings, only children can see the angels, the children who have not lost their belief. It’s the belief that Solveig Dommartin was talking about in her interview “Voir avec un coeur d’enfant” in (Pré)publications 147, from March, 1995, translated from French by Richard Raskin: “Remember your childheart and don’t forget your childhood. And remember that you live with your heart and that you see with your heart. […] For me, that’s pretty much what Wings of Desire is about. All the characters are so true, so authentic, they all see with the eyes of a child.” It is about the first sensations of living, walking, breathing, touching things, tasting food, laughing, dreaming. It’s what children are so good at. It’s what adults forget so quickly.

Marion dreams of Damiel, not knowing that he’s right there watching her. In the aforementioned interview, Solveig Dommartin refers to the circus as an element of dream, making an analogy between the man who filmed Wings of Desire (Henri Alekan, the same who made Jean Cocteau’s La belle e la bête) and the name of the circus, Alekan, a beautiful tribute that Wim Wenders paid to his director of photography and cinema itself. “Henri Alekan is the great magician of dream lighting,” Solveig said. “He’s someone who can really make you dream. He lights up a face, and all of a sudden it’s part of a fairy tale, like at the time when people really loved the cinema, when there were stars. Because there were little glints of light that lit up in people’s eyes, and it was thanks to the director of photography that the actors suddenly became super-human, godlike. And I think it’s an homage to that magic, of light, of sequins… But it’s also the magic of childhood. And Henri is, after all, the greatest child I know in this profession. You just have to look at his eyes and you’ve understood everything. He is always so full of life. He is someone who wants to produce beauty to the very limit of the dream. And this is something the actors can sense. When you are illuminated by Henri, you are instantly turned into a deity, you don’t have to do anything, you are carried by his light. You have the impression of being totally transported.” As if his images defy the laws of gravity and redefine this world we witness in the film, at the confluence of the seen and the unseen. It’s the world where we are all Visitors.

Solveig Dommartin in “Der Himmel über Berlin”, 1987

“In Berlin I met Wim Wenders for the first time, in a bar. It was around midnight. He didn’t have much time. He was probably still shooting. He knew where the plot was going, but there was no official script. He told me I’d be taken to wardrobe where I should pick out my costume. It felt like a Cassavetes movie.

At the wardrobe place, everything fell into place except for the hat. I tried on a bunch of them, but each hat had something about it that I didn’t like.

We met on Sunday in the hotel room to go over the costume. Wim was satisfied with all that we (the wardrobe girl and I) had chosen. Then we came to the problem with the hats. I put them on one at a time, pointing out what I didn’t like.”

Peter Falk talks about working with Wim Wenders in his book, One More Thing, and goes on for another paragraph, describing how after trying on and rejecting all the hats, Wenders said smiling: “I’ll say this – maybe we don’t have a hat, but we got a scene.” And the scene is in the movie.

Peter Falk’s dark, long coat is similar to the coats of the “angels” – he is an ex-Angel himself – who not only hover over a war-torn Berlin, but seem imprisoned in the city, invisible to man. It seems timeless in black and white, and I think graphic and film poster designer Michael Borland’s brilliant depiction of Bruno Ganz’s Damiel in the Criterion cover art speaks about that before the movie does, and, most importantly, is a powerful conveyance of the character’s love and loneliness, and ”it creates a connection with people”, with the viewers.

The city then becomes harder to define in colour – and the physical and emotional scars of its past become more visible – when Damiel and the other angels descend to human life. Only at the end of the film does colour take a whole new meaning and attains a sense of timelessness as poignant as black and white is in the first half of the film. It’s when we see Marion in the bar in the red dress, on the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds playing on site in the background. It’s the moment when she finally interacts with Damiel, it’s when she finally sees him. It is a moment she has prepared for the entire film. “And that is also why she stays in Berlin,” Solveig Dommartin revealed. “The circus leaves but she remains behind because she has an intuition that it is there that her life will take on its true meaning. But what is marvelous is that at no moment is she an object of desire, and when she sees Damiel, she recognizes him as the man of her life. It’s obvious to her. At that moment, as a human being, she herself makes a choice, every bit as much as he does.”

”Der Himmel über Berlin”, 1987

We had seen Marion in black and white in a sequined trapeze costume (Birgitta Bjerke was the film’s costume designer) with wings attached to it during her circus act, more otherworldly than the angels themselves. We had seen her in plain grey clothes, staying behind on her suitcase after the circus packs up and leaves, the grey surroundings weighing down on her. And, finally, in that last scene, we see her. She is completely transformed. She is wearing a Yohji Yamamoto dress. There could not have been any other choice, because there is no other designer who understands humanity the way Yohji Yamamoto does through his clothes. “My clothes are about human beings: they are alive. I am alive,” the designer confessed. In her red dress, Marion comes to life, just as Damiel has come to life, in all its magic and ephemerality.

Bruno Ganz and Solveig Dommartin in “Der Himmel über Berlin”, 1987