As should be clear from the description above, from the moment the invocation
begins until the time the young man replaces Damiel as comforter of the dying
man, the camera tracks to the right (2060 b), then to the left (2060 c), then
back to the right (2060 d), and finally once again to the left (2060 e), before
coming to rest.
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
The arrows indicate the changing directions of the camera movement in shot 2060
and the order in which the stills should be read here (and only here). Stills
1-3 represent segment b, stills 4-6 segment c, stills 7-9 segment d, and stills
10-11 the beginning of segment e. I am grateful to Lars G. Andersen and
Bjørn Laursen for help with this illustration.
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.
These variables, serving as criteria for dividing shot 2060 into five segments,
can be aligned as follows:
| tracking | voice(s) |
|---|
| 2060 a | none | dying man's fragmentary thoughts |
| 2060 b | right | Damiel recites the invocation |
| 2060 c | left | Damiel and the dying man speak the invocation |
| 2060 d | right | the dying man alone speaks the invocation |
| 2060 e | left | as the dying man continues the invocation, the young man begins to scold the onlookers |
During the interview Wim Wenders graciously accorded to me, and which covered
many aspects of Wings of Desire, I asked the following question to which
Wenders replied as follows:
QUESTION: There is at least one shot in Wings of Desire in which the
camera behaves as though it were filming a p.o.v., but I can't imagine whose
point-of-view it could be: the shot where you track back and forth in front of
the dying motorcycle guy. Did it just "feel right" to do it that way or was
there a specific reason for this camera movement?
WIM WENDERS: I think it had to do with Damiel's pain. The scene comes at
the end of the driving shot that precedes it. At first, we wanted to do it in
one shot, to come around with the driving shot and stop in front of the dying
man. And then it turned out that we just couldn't handle the curve when coming
around because the camera was mounted on the front of a camera-car and we
couldn't manage to come around all the way. So we had to devise two shots for
what was initially planned as only one.
And then we tried to find a position for the frontal shot and we looked at it
from the left and right so that the dying man was either on the left or on the
right hand. By going back and forth just to find the position - as I did with
my viewfinder, from left to right, and then again from right to left - I
thought that going back and forth sort of showed more what Damiel was actually
doing, in the way that he is - as the man is dying - that he's taking him
over, so to speak. In a way, in a strange way, this "action" as well as the
pain that came with it, were in that camera movement.
But obviously it was hard to explain it and I remember that I discussed it with
Agnès [Godard] who was afraid that it wasn't justified because all the
other camera movements were so to speak justified. But I thought that in that
particular case, as it was somehow about a transition between life and death,
it did translate something: not so much his p.o.v., more a mental attitude.
Damiel's tenderness and his care for the man were in that back-and-forth
movement.[6]
Intrigued by Wenders's reference to Agnès Godard's reservations
about the shot, I sought an interview with her, which she kindly granted. Here
are the questions and her answers relating to shot 2060:
QUESTION: As I mentioned in my letter, Wim Wenders stated in an interview
that you didn't entirely agree as to the way in which the scene with the dying
motorcycle man should be filmed, and that in your view, the camera movement in
this scene wasn't entirely justified.
AGNÈS GODARD: I was astonished when you told me that since I had
no recollection of it at all. I was so astonished that tried to think back to
what might have been in question, and in fact, it's true and it's connected to
several different issues.
To begin with, it was only my second film as camera operator. So I was a bit
intimidated by it all. Secondly, it was at the start of the shooting, and I
don't think I had realized at that point to what degree Wim knew what the
camera saw. Something about the camera movement seemed a bit risky to me and
scared me, because I wasn't quite able to see in it as clear and perfectly
logical ("Cartesian") a purpose, though that of course was not the nature of
the film, which is poetic. But that's what had frightened me.
It was difficult to carry out technically because of the equipment. The camera
was on a dolly on tracks, and in order to keep it low enough, that is at the
eye level of people seated on the ground, it had to be mounted on what we call
a "swan neck" - a brace which enables you to keep the camera in a very low
position. The camera moved, it descended, from a rather high to a low position,
and I had to do a balancing act. It was quite uncomfortable and I was afraid of
not executing the movement in a fluid way.
And also there [in Berlin], I couldn't follow what was being said, I didn't
understand [the language] well enough to grasp what was really happening. I
think the technical worries got to me most... It was a cause of some anxiety
for me.
The need to include the young man within the frame - I had understood him to be
the son of the man who was dying - to include him in the image, not in a chancy
way but to have him arrive in view because life is a string of things like
that, of things hanging by a thread... that seemed difficult to me. Not a
second too soon nor a second too late, but at the one right second. And I was
afraid of not being able to translate that and of losing - in the reframing of
the shot - what I had done to capture it in relation to that swaying motion
which, after a while, I understood to be like heartbeats that were slowing
down.
Do you see those camera movements as open to other interpretations as
well?
I never had a chance to discuss these things with Wim during the
shooting; obviously, that would have been impossible. My understanding - and
this came afterwards - is that the camera had to move in order not to
be dead before the character. That's what I felt, in the rhythm, like a
heartbeat that might stop any moment. But we don't see it stop, there's no
melodrama here.
When I saw the film, I also loved the cut to the following shot: of the angel
filmed in a slightly high angle tracking shot as he walks on the bridge: life
went on with that walking, which ends when a train passes, heading elsewhere.
Death was part of life.
At the time of the shooting, I had not yet gauged to what degree Wim knows what
is within the frame, whether the camera is stationary or moving. I have never
seen anyone know the way he did what you see with a 25 mm, a 32, a 40, a 50. He
sees where the camera is, he knows where [the visual field] begins and ends.
It's quite extraordinary.
When I asked him why the camera moved back and forth, he proposed two
explanations: 1) that in some way, those camera movements expressed the pain
Damiel experienced; and 2) "I thought that going left to right sort of showed
more what Damiel was actually doing, in the way that he's sort of taking over
the dying man, so to speak. In a strange way, it was in that camera movement."
Yes, I see. It was somewhat in that sense that I mentioned heartbeats.
But like something throbbing. For example, I have on several occasions seen
people in psychiatric hospitals, and it is true that that pain is throbbing,
sometimes they shift their weight from one foot to another. It's a little like
that. And with that pain, it was not an altogether normal heartbeat. Something
was ending. And in fact, cutting to Damiel walking on the bridge was in a sense
accepting that [the dying man] has passed away, perhaps... But we don't see it
end. Life goes on, through Damiel, who knew perhaps before anyone else that it
was going to end. That's why we don't need to see it end.
Wenders also said that originally, the shot which began on the bridge was
supposed to continue without any cutting, but that it was physically impossible
since the camera-car couldn't make the turn as tightly as would have been
necessary.
Yes. The shot depended on the route of the car and the movement of the
camera. The camera was mounted on the front of the car which had to be driven
at high speed. At the place where the wounded man was lying, the road was
damaged - the car couldn't really turn - and the maximum breadth of the pan was
insufficient. The shot couldn't be done the way Wim wanted it at the end of
this ride on the bridge. He must have felt the need to find some other way of
enriching what was to follow.
If the camera had not been moved back and forth, from left to right, would
the shot have been too static?
Yes, I think so. I think it would almost have been a pleonasm with the
text. But being in motion, for whatever reason, something magical happens, it
enables the words to breathe and we accept the duration. It's very strange.
Because the words are after all quite poetic, even though they almost everyday
words, and it makes them breathe, it brings them to life while evoking the
notion of duration. And Wim alone had foreseen that.
And for me, that too is perhaps expressive of fragility: one fine day, those
words can vanish, without our giving them a thought; at any given second, it
can all stop. For me, it also expressed something of that kind.
During the shooting, I didn't enjoy [the spoken words] as fully as I do now
because it was in German and I had trouble understanding it. I should add that
when Bruno [Gans] spoke while being filmed, there was so much music in it that
even though I couldn't understand everything he said, I was carried away. But I
didn't have any insight into its meaning. So I had some worries that Wim must
have sensed. It isn't entirely wrong to say that I didn't agree since I asked
myself: "Is it certain that this is the right way to do the shot?"
When I showed this scene to my students, some of them said that the back and
forth movement of the camera was an oscillation between life and death, and
that even the fact that the action takes place at the end of a bridge is
significant in that respect. Does that strike you as entirely mistaken?
No, I don't think it's mistaken. As a matter of fact, the richness of
many of the shots and of the "mise en images" in general in this film, springs
from the fact that you can sometimes find an unlimited number of explanations
or images of that kind, because what is said and the manner in which it is
filmed are so perfectly suited to one another. That's truly beautiful. Granted,
you can also arrive at some far fetched interpretations, but basically, what
really counts is that so many things be suggested that each person can find in
it his or her own explanation, and that's magnificent. That means that the
implement called cinema is there in all its plenitude, and it's wonderful that
each of us can find his or her own explanation; that's what makes images come
to life. For me, that's the magic of cinema: that from something lifeless and
impalpable, there is a moment in which sensation and emotion are created, and
that it is possible to make images live beyond their texture. In this film, I
think that that happens to a fascinating degree.
Was the path of the camera movements in this shot slightly curved?
No, it wasn't curved, it was a traveling in a straight line. The effects man
was really extraordinary. He also knew exactly what was in the frame of the
camera. But Wim was there and he was the conductor... For him, there is an
intellectual investigation in play, since he knows very well what meaning this
kind of thing can produce. Often, and sometimes for extended periods, he asked
himself questions. But at a certain point, I think a certain intuition comes
and he trusts it. It's quite strong. In that respect, he has a special contact
with the space seen through a lens.
Did you need to do more than one take for that shot?
Yes, we did several takes. I'm not sure how many. Probably about five or
six.
But all done in about the same way?
Yes... I wanted to add something about the camera movements and that
kind of intuition. The exceptional quality of the "mise en images" in this film
is also due to camera movements that are sometimes quite sophisticated, without
ever appearing to be so. It was never the camera that set feelings in motion.
It's more subtle than that... And I was afraid that in reframing the shot, in
going after the young man, we were imposing - by the very fact that we
went looking for him, that we were reframing the angel and the dying man - that
we were pulling the strings of the story. It seemed preferable to me
that it be the chain of events by themselves, that Damiel was someone who, by
nature, was always there at the right time, and that that was the chain of
events.
Another piece of information Wim Wenders gave me: he said that when he
realized that he couldn't continue the shot on the bridge, that he stood before
the two actors and looked at them through a viewfinder, moving to the right and
to the left in search of the right place to position the camera. And in this
way, he conceived the idea...
Yes, a viewfinder, that's wonderful. He must have been trying out
different positions. Yes, that doesn't surprise me. (Laughter). That goes to
show that Wim does a kind of preparatory work which reflects a concern for
precision. But he is also capable of always remaining open to what is going on
at the very moment... And what you are telling me now is the proof of that. I
think it's brilliant.[7]
One way to summarize the interpretive material in the interviews
quoted 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; 3)
of Damiel's tenderness and care for the dying man; and 4) of a transition
between life and death; while for Agnès Godard, the camera movement 5)
was like a heartbeat, and 6) made the words come alive.
That other commentators who wrote about this scene (see note 5) 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.
When I showed the dying motorcyclist scene to a group of students and asked
what they made of the camera work in shot 2060, some suggested that the camera
movement was like an oscillation between the poles of life and death, and in
that respect, related to what the bridge in the scene might symbolize; for
others, it was a pendulum, showing that time was running out; yet others saw in
it the rocking of a cradle, in connection with Damiel's comforting of the dying
man.
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):
Guck doch nicht so blöd! Hast du
noch niemanden krepieren sehen?
Scheiße, so einfach ist das? Da
lieg' ich in der Pfütze, stink' wie
ein Tanker. Ich kann doch hier jetzt
nicht eingehen wie 'ne Primel! Alles
so klar! Wie die alle dastehen! Wie
die mich anglotzen! Der Ölfleck...
Karin, das hätte ich ihr gestern
sagen sollen... Das Ding ist mir
einfach weggerutscht. ...daß es mir
leid tut. Karin! Jetzt lieg ich
hier. Ich kann doch nicht so
einfach... Ich muß doch noch...
Karin, ich muß doch noch soviel tun!
Karin, Baby, mir geht's nicht gut.[8]
|
Don't look at me so stupidly!
Haven't you seen anyone croak
before? Shit, is it this easy? I'm
lying here in a puddle, stinking
like an oil tanker. I can't really
end up here like a wilting flower!
Everything so clear! How they stand
there gawking at me. The oil
smudge.. Karin, I should have told
her yesterday... This thing got out
of control. ...I'm so sorry. Karin!
Now I'm lying here. I can't
simply... I have to... Karin, I
still have so much to do! Karin,
Baby, things look bad for me.
|
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:
Die Anrufung der Welt Wie ich bergauf
ging und aus dem Talnebel in die Sonne
kam... Das Feuer am Rande der
Viehweide... Die Kartoffeln in der
Asche... Das Bootshaus weit draußen am
See...
Das Kreuz des Südens... Der Ferne
Osten, Der Hohe Norden, Der Wilde
Westen Der Große Bärensee!
Die Insel Tristan de Cunha. Das Delta
des Mississippi. Stromboli. Die alten
Häuser Charlottenburgs. Albert Camus.
Das Morgenlicht. Das Augenpaar des
Kindes. Das Schwimmen am Wasserfall...
Die Flecken der ersten Tropfen des
Regens. Die Sonne. Das Brot und der
Wein. Der Hüpfschritt. Das Osterfest.
Die Adern der Blätter. Das wehende
Gras. Die Farben der Steine. Die
Kiesel auf dem Grunde des Bachbetts.
Das weiße Tischtuch im Freien. Der
Traum vom Haus im Haus. Der schlafende
Nächste im Nebenraum. Die Ruhe des
Sonntags. Der Horizont. Der
Lichtschein vom Zimmer... Im Garten.
Das Nachtflugzeug. Das freihändig
Radfahren. Die schöne Unbekannte. Mein
Vater. Meine Mutter. Meine Frau. Mein
Kind.[9]
|
Invocation of the World As I emerged
from the valley out of the fog into
the sunshine... The fire at the edge
of the pasture... The potatoes in
the ashes... The boat-house far off
at the lake...
The Southern Cross, The Far East,
The High North, The Wild West, The
Great Bear Lake!
The Isles of Tristan de Cunha. The
Mississippi Delta. Stromboli. The
old houses of Charlottenburg. Albert
Camus. The morning light. The
child's eyes. Swimming at the
waterfall... The first raindrop
spots. The sun. Bread and wine.
Skipping. Easter. The veins of
leaves. The waving grass. The
colors of the stones. The pebbles on
the creek bed.
The white table cloth in the open air.
The dream of the house in the house.
The person asleep in the next room.
Sunday's peacefulness. The horizon.
The light from the room... In the
garden. The night plane. Biking with
no hands. The beautiful stranger. My
father. My mother. My wife. My child.
|
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 of his life 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.
Ciment, Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret. "Entretien avec Wim Wenders."
Positif 319 (September 1987), pp. 9-15.
Cook, Roger. "Angels, Fiction and History in Berlin: Wim Wenders' Wings of
Desire," The Germanic Review 66, 1 (Winter 1991), pp. 34-47.
Kolker, Robert Phillip and Peter Beicken. The Films of Wim Wenders. Cinema
as Vision and Desire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Parra, Danièle. "Entretien avec Wim Wenders." Revue du
cinéma 431 (October 1987), pp. 33-35.
Raskin, Richard. "Faire vivre les images. Une interview avec Agnès
Godard sur Les ailes du désir." (Pré)publications
142 (February 1994), pp. 42-56.
Raskin, Richard. "It's Images You Can Trust Less and Less. An Interview with
Wim Wenders on Wings of Desire," (Pré)publications 145
(October 1994), pp. 23-34.
Raskin, Richard. "Si tant est qu'il existe des anges réels. Un entretien
avec Henri Alekan sur Les ailes du désir et sur l'art de
l'image." (Pré)publications 141 (November 1993), pp. 41-58.
Wenders, Wim and Peter Handke. Der Himmel über Berlin. Ein Filmbuch.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992, orig. pub. 1987.
Winkler-Bessone, Claude. Les Films de Wim Wenders. La nouvelle naissance des
images. Berne: Peter Lang, 1992.
1
Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret, "Entretien avec Wim Wenders."
Positif 319 (September 1987), p. 14.
2 Danièle Parra, "Entretien avec Wim Wenders." Revue du
cinéma 431 (October 1987), p. 35.
3 Shot numbers are derived from the shooting script, published both in German
and French: Wim Wenders and Peter Handke. Der Himmel über Berlin. Ein
Filmbuch (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992, orig. pub. 1987); and Les Ailes du
désir (Paris: Jade-Flammarion, 1987; French translation by Dominique
Petit et Bernard Eisenschitz).
4 Born in Paris in 1909, Henri Alekan - first as camera assistant,
then as camera operator and finally as director of photography - contributed to
the production of numerous masterpieces of French cinema, such as Marcel
Carné's Le Quai des brumes (1938), René Clément's
La Bataille du rail (1946) and Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la
bête (1946). He is also the author of an extraordinary book on light
in cinema and painting: Des lumières et des ombres of which a new
edition was published by the Librairie du Collectionneur in 1991. In 1981, he
was Wenders's director of photography for Der Stand der Dinge (The State of
Things). He kindly granted me an interview on Wings of Desire, in
the summer of 1993: Richard Raskin, "Si tant est qu'il existe des anges
réels. Un entretien avec Henri Alekan sur Les ailes du
désir et sur l'art de l'image." (Pré)publications 141
(nov. 1993), pp. 41-58.
5 Roger Cook, "Angels, Fiction and History in Berlin: Wim Wenders'
Wings of Desire," The Germanic Review 66, 1 (Winter 1991), p. 40;
Claude Winkler-Bessone, Les Films de Wim Wenders. La nouvelle naissance des
images (Berne: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 27, 198-199; Robert Phillip Kolker
and Peter Beicken, The Films of Wim Wenders. Cinema as Vision and Desire
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 147.
6 Richard Raskin, "It's Images You Can Trust Less and Less. An
Interview with Wim Wenders on Wings of Desire,"
(Pré)publications 145 (October 1994), pp. 23-34.
7 Richard Raskin, "Faire vivre les images. Une interview avec
Agnès Godard sur Les ailes du désir."
(Pré)publications 142 (février 1994), pp. 42-56.
Agnès Godard was Wenders's camera assistant for Der Stand der Dinge
(The State of Things) in 1981 and Paris Texas in 1984. She served as
camera operator for Wenders's Wings of Desire (1986) and Peter
Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect (1987), and more recently as
director of photography for such directors as Agnès Varda, Peter Handke
and Claire Denis.
8 Wim Wenders and Peter Handke. Der Himmel über Berlin. Ein
Filmbuch (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992, orig. pub. 1987), p. 52. I am grateful
to Dieter Britz for help with the English translation. Disparities between the
translation given here (and on pp. 84-88 above) and the film's subtitles are
intentional.
9 Ibid., pp. 52-55.
|
