Wenders’ Angle on Angels : Film Maker’s ‘Wings’ Spreads His Optimism

Is there an angel hovering over the Chateau Marmont? Just a small one? Buzzing the Sunset Boulevard palm trees, circling the bungalows, skating invisibly on one of the glass tables in the room out back?

Perhaps. But, right now, Wim Wenders--whose new film, “Wings of Desire,” is all about angels--doesn’t look as if he sees it. His eyes, behind glasses, seem focused deep inside.

Wenders--with Werner Herzog and the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the ruling triumvirate of the ‘70s German film renaissance--was in town to help promote the movie, which opens Friday at the Nuart in West Los Angeles. It won him the best director award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and seven other major awards.

Tall, dark, with longish brown hair and a face that, at 42, still resembles a young student’s, he sits at the table and chisels his words with a sculptor’s precision.

He’s grappling with something that angels really like: souls. The souls of humankind--as revealed or suggested on film.

In his “Wings,” two seraphic guardians in trench coats--who speak dialogues written by novelist-playwright Peter Handke--solemnly witness a bleak, black-and-white contemporary Berlin--until one of them falls in love with a trapeze artist and becomes, in a blaze of color, human.

But even if these angels are reminiscent of Wenders’ previous protagonists--the outsiders, artists, murderers, detectives or tramps who inhabit, in films like “Kings of the Road” and “Paris, Texas,” his special land of rootless people--”Wings of Desire” charts new territory. It’s the most luminously optimistic film of his career.

Why do your angels inhabit such a world of outsiders?

Well . . . maybe the angels are inclined to watch outsiders more than the people who are safe. I think the angels would have a natural instinct to watch over people who are in danger, like God.

Movies, of course, have always been obsessed with outsiders: And every movie maker turns his hero, almost necessarily, into an outsider. The angels in my film, of course, are an extreme form of the outsider. . . . They’re physically outside.

Why angels?

I think the whole idea of angels came out of the Rilke poems I was reading at the time. I don’t see them in a religious context, because I’m not religious. Angels for me are creatures out of a strictly poetic world. . . .”

Why Peter Handke?

I wanted to involve Peter in the project, because I thought: these angels have been around since the beginning of mankind. They’ve followed everything. They’ve witnessed the whole development of language. They’ve also witnessed--over the last 50 years--the terrible decline of language.

I felt the angels should speak a very rich, poetic language. German at its very best, which is, for me, the 19th Century. Goethe. Rilke. Later, there’s still Kafka, but afterwards I feel there is a constant decline. The everyday language of today . . . doesn’t exceed 20%, of what an everyday person, 100 years ago, was able to say. . . .

Why the black-and-white photography?

Berlin struck me as a black-and-white city. Maybe because of its extreme political situation. . . . And then, there’s the idea that the angels, as spiritual beings, would see the essential: in people, in things, in objects. . . . Black and white reveals the essence of a person. I think, much more than a portrait in color. The angels are spiritual beings. They’d see the truth more than we can--and, for me, colors are very much the surface of things.

Why the legendary 78-year-old cinematographer Henri Alekan (“Beauty and the Beast,” “Roman Holiday”)?

I had done a few black-and-white films, and the most exciting experience was “The State of Things,” which Henri shot for me in ’82 . . . a great experience. I had seen Henri work: I had never understood it. Henri never cared about--and it seemed like a sacrilege for me in the beginning--the source of the light. He didn’t care if a person was casting 4 or 5 or 6 shadows. . . . Finally, I understood he was not after realism at all--but was really creating, inside the frame, a whole new thing--a poetic mood, which existed, independent of reality, in different shades between black and white. . . .

So, with this film, I thought instantly it would be the chance to get the best of Henri, to have him really open up his treasure box. . . . Henri had already retired when I called him up. But it didn’t take long to convince him. . . .

You began filming without a completed script or storyboard. How did you manage?

Because my films really come out of a very classical American tradition--and I’ve learned my craft from people like Anthony Mann or Hawks or Ford--I feel that doing something like a storyboard or a script that would define everything from A to Z . . . (would be) an overdose of form. . . . I felt if your film ventures into poetry, you can only kill it if there’s no spontaneity.

I really started the film way before anybody was ready. My art department had started to work for two weeks. We had only half of the locations. We had not even the slightest idea how the angels would look. We didn’t have a wardrobe; we didn’t have a hair style. Nobody was ready to go into the film. But I felt if I start this movie only after I’m sure about everything-- then I’m sure to lose it. And then I will not have the right to even use the metaphor of angels--because then it’s all explained, it’s all gone.

Really, everybody thought I was crazy. But I thought this was the only way to make sure that there was spontaneity left.

Your four-year companion, Solveig Dommartin--who plays the film’s circus acrobat--also tempted fate.

Solveig had never done a film before. . . . She’d never been in front of a camera. I told her she’d play the trapeze artist. And she thought I was joking. . . . But she saw I was serious, So she instantly went to work. She said ‘If De Niro was able to become a boxer, I can certainly become a trapeze artist.’

One thing that obviously preoccupies you is the question of moral and artistic idealism. How do you maintain a pure viewpoint in the often gaudily cynical movie world?

I guess I’ve been inspired mostly by movies which have succeeded in maintaining an idealistic point of view. Like those of Ozu, Truffaut and Tarkovsky: my three archangels in the end credits. My favorite American film, I guess, is Herbert Biberman’s (blacklist-era labor drama) “Salt of the Earth.” And I think all of John Ford’s films had a very idealistic position, and I like them for that. Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy”--very misunderstood here--is my favorite American film of the ‘80s. . . . I always like these films better: films that have an idea and an ideal.

I think that’s a force and a power that movies can have, and that it’s being used less and less. Things have become very cynical and very opportunistic. The very idea of entertainment has become rather cynical--as if any moral views were not entertaining enough. But I think it’s totally unproductive to go with a certain trend and show moral deterioration in terms of relations between people. I think it’s much more productive to invent better relations.

And relations between people change. The whole sexual revolution felt sort of liberating--and, after all, it didn’t get us anywhere.

Your next project--a science-fiction film--is set during a future worldwide economic depression. Your films, up to now, have often taken a dark, bleak view of the world, but “Wings” is optimistic. What are your own feelings about the future?

Believe me: even if, often enough, one would have reason for a darker outlook, I feel there is so much intelligence, so much sensitivity--wherever you go, in the East or the West. . . . There’s so much readiness for care, politically as well as ecologically, so much awareness. . . . And I feel there is also such a lot of intelligence on this planet, that I just cannot accept that it’s not going to amount to anything. . . .”