The best way to see Wings of Desire is on a very big screen. But it’s also important to see a print that delivers its extravagant imagery without distortion or damage. Thanks to The Criterion Collection, a pristine version is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
My revised review of the film is here.
I also wrote about the film in Through a Screen Darkly.
The Blu-ray Criterion of Wings of Desire brought tears to my eyes it’s so stunning. The picture and sound is as good as it gets. It’s my favorite film; I’ve seen it countless times; and I discovered new images and sounds in the frame I’d never seen before. I was particularly impressed with the improved and augmented subtitling. The black and white footage in the Blu-ray transfer was, as expected, stunning, but the color sequences of Berlin just floored me. Gorgeous!
If you haven’t seen it yet, the outtakes are simply beautiful. I was pleasantly surprised by those. They are lovingly restored and pristine. Some of them are incredibly poetic, and having seen them now, I’m somewhat sad many of those shots are not in the theatrical cut.
Oh, and the Henri Alekan documentaries are a cinematographer’s dream!
After seeing this, I can’t wait to see Criterion’s take on Paris, Texas in January 2010.
I watched the Bonus Features disc this weekend. Some of the deleted scenes were interesting, but I didn’t really get into them. I thought the other features were more worthwhile, especially the Alekan documentaries. I’d never thought about how complex lighting a movie can be. The interviews with Curt Bois were fun, too.
I still think the English title sounds like a bad porno. (Not that there’s such a thing as good pornography.) A literal translation of the German title Der Himmel über Berlin would be either “The Sky Over Berlin” or “The Heaven Over Berlin,” (the German word Himmel can mean either) which sounds better to me, personally.
Actually, I noticed there were two separate links in the supplements for “deleted scenes” and “outtakes” (I’m not sure what the difference between outtakes and deleted scenes are — maybe someone can explain it). In any event, I remember those deleted scenes, with Wenders commentary, from the 2003 DVD release. I thought they were marginally interesting. I don’t remember the outtakes from before though and thought those, on the other hand, were superb.
From what I know about Alekan, he liked to use a lot of lights, with very complex setups. I recall Wenders mentioning on the commentary that Alekan would use every light on the grip truck if he could — he’d light all day if there weren’t other pesky business to attend to, like shooting the scene for instance! =) Personally, I’m not for the overly complex, baroque, use a million lights method of Alekan. But somehow that practice worked beautifully for him personally. He was a master at creating such visual depth and subtle gradation of tones.
Anyways, I don’t think Alekan’s complex approach is necessarily the rule for how movies are lit. There are other DP’s who favor a simpler methodology and, if possible, try to use the fewest number of lights. Guys like Sven Nykvist, Robby Müller and Roger Deakins come to mind as proponents of that style.