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Camera work of this kind was masterfully orchestrated by veteran cinematographer Henri Alekan, who served as Wenders's director of photography for Wings of Desire.And it is certainly the case that virtually every example of fluid or dramatic camera work in the film can be accounted for in terms of an angel's point of view. There is, however, an intriguing exception, involving camera movement of an entirely different nature, so original and striking in its form that it can be seen as a new cinematic figure, invented by Wim Wenders to fill a specific need. Oddly enough, this camera work has not been mentioned by other commentators on the film - not even by those who have discussed the scene in which it is found [4]. The present article is devoted to that camera movement, which both Wim Wenders and cinematographer Agnès Godard (who actually shot the footage) graciously agreed to discuss with me in separate interviews that took place in Berlin (July 1993) and Paris (January 1994), respectively, and both of which will be found above in this issue of p.o.v.
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At the end of this shot, the camera bears right and comes to a halt near the dying man, whose crashed motorcycle is lying nearby. The driver of the car that hit him stands there, along with other passersby, looking at him from a distance. The next shot, 2060, is the one containing the innovative camera movement which is the focus of this article. The shot can be divided into five segments (designated here as 2060 a, b, c, d and e), according to criteria that will be evident as each segment is discussed. The shot begins with Damiel moving forward toward the dying man; we now understand that it was Damiel who had been gliding across the bridge, and that we were seeing through his eyes. As he approaches the dying man, Damiel kneels behind him, places his hands on either side of the dying man's head, and leans his own head down, listening intently for or tuning into the thoughts trying to form themselves in a deeper layer of the dying man's mind:
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It is at this point that Damiel begins reciting what is designated in the screenplay as the "invocation of the world" (De Anrufung der Welt), helping the dying man to focus his thoughts on the things that had meant the most to him during his lifetime. As Damiel begins speaking for the dying man, the camera tracks slowly toward the right, panning slightly to keep the two actors within the frame:
Now, the camera begins tracking in the opposite direction, as the dying man joins in speaking the invocation, so that both his and Damiel's voices are heard simultaneously:
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At the very end of this segment of the shot, we begin to hear the strains of cello music. Now again, the camera reverses the direction of its movement, and as the shot continues, Damiel remains silent while the dying man alone continues speaking the invocation. In the final moments of this segment of the shot, a young man is seen hurrying along the bridge toward the scene of the accident.
Yet again, the camera reverses its movement, tracking left one last time, and finally coming to rest when the young man arrives at the scene, scolding the onlookers. In the final moments of this last segment of the shot, Damiel looks up and cedes his place to the young man, who places his hands on the dying man's shoulders. Damiel caresses the young man's head (with an immaterial hand), as he rises to turn back toward the bridge.
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In shot 2061, Damiel rises, turns toward the bridge and walks back across it. We continue to hear the inner thoughts of the dying man, now spoken in a strong voice, which replaces the enfeebled one heard in the previous shot. The camera tracks backwards in front of Damiel as he advances, then pans right to catch sight of a train passing beneath the bridge on which Damiel is standing.
Shot 2062 brings us into the train, looking through the conductor's window, presumably from Damiel's point of view, as the train passes under another bridge and heads toward a tunnel. This shot, during which the voice of the dying man continues, ends with a dissolve:
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In the remainder of the sequence - shots 2063-2068, all executed without camera movement - Damiel is perched on the shoulder of the Victory Statue, and we see either Damiel or what Damiel is looking at, as we hear the rest of the invocation spoken by the dying man:
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Each change in direction corresponds to a change in the verbal component of the scene. Before the tracking begins, the dying man's fragmentary inner thoughts are heard - those thoughts embedded in the situation at hand. When the camera first tracks right (2060 b), Damiel begins to recite the invocation for the dying man. When the camera then tracks left (2060 c), the dying man joins his voice to that of Damiel. When the camera once again tracks right (2060 d), the dying man alone recites the invocation. And when the camera tracks left for the final time, the voice of the young man is heard, along with the dying man's invocation.
One way to summarize that interpretative material contained in the interviews provided above, is to suggest that for Wenders, the camera movement in shot 2060 was in some way expressive 1) of Damiel's pain; 2) of Damiel's taking over; and 3) of a transition between life and death; while for Agnès Godard, the camera movement 4) was like a heartbeat, and 5) made the words come alive. That other commentators who wrote about this scene (see note 3) made no mention of the extraordinary camera movement in shot 2060, is in some ways surprising. At the same time, that very omission suggests that what I take to be one of Agnès Godard's chief worries about the movement - that it risked being obtrusive and drawing attention to the process of filming rather than to what was filmed - was entirely unfounded.
My own approach would be to supplement what Wenders and Godard have said about the shot, by looking at the camera movement in relation to the verbal component of the scene. When the scene begins, we hear the dying man's inner voice (shots 2059 and 2060a):
Though there are fleeting references to "yesterday" and to things that will never be done in a non-existent future, this inner voice is essentially rooted in the here and now, in the physical situation at hand. The "invocation of the world" issues from a deeper part of the dying man. It is not merely his inner voice, but the very wellspring of his being, and although it is in its own way highly concrete, it nevertheless disengages the dying man from his situation in the gutter by enabling him to recapitulate what is most meaningful in his life:
When Damiel leans his head down onto the dying man's head (shot 2060a), it is not to hear his inner voice, which was perfectly audible from a distance while Damiel was still crossing the bridge, but to tune in to a kind of inner poem, hidden in the depths of the dying man and inaccessible to him. Damiel pulls this inner poem up to the surface, helping the dying man to find it and to speak it. And in the process, the dying man regains control and rises above the situation at hand. What we have here is a transition from what might be called a discourse of embeddedness ("I'm lying in a puddle, stinking like an oil tanker..."), to a discourse of transcendence ("As I emerged from the valley out of the fog into the sunshine..."), from the merely subjective to the spiritual, from randomness to order, from the limited to the all-encompassing, from prose to a kind of poetry, from the harshest of realities to a kind of enchantment. And in the process, the camera becomes enchanted as well.
1 This is a somewhat modified version of my article, "Camera Movement in Wings of Desire," which appeared in p.o.v. no. 4 (December 1997), pp. 79-100.
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