"Der Himmel über Berlin" (Der Himmel über Berlin) is a poetic film directed by Wim Wenders, one of the "Four Great German Films", and won the Best Director Award at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Today, the editor will lead everyone into this classic~
1. Plot introduction
The protagonists of "Under the Sphere of Berlin" are two angels exiled to Berlin. One is Cassiel, who is used to watching the world’s suffering and cold eyes. Damiel). The two wore large angel robes, wandering around the city, listening to people's prayers, and silently observing people's inner world.
The two angels quietly overlooked the devastated Berlin after the war and the people living in it: estrangements and disputes between parents and children, husbands and wives continue to develop, the child standing alone in the corner watching other children playing together alone, car accidents The victims endured pain and suffering, and the prostitutes who could not make money on the street cried and spent makeup...
Cassirer revisited the old place of an old man who lost all his relatives in the war and listened to him recalling the golden age of Berlin. The old man walked to the once prosperous but now ruined Potsdamer Platz, wandering around, sighing. The old man had nowhere to go in the desolate wilderness, and finally sat on an abandoned sofa, closed his eyes and started thinking.
The two angels are still collecting people's thoughts in the library, picking up fragments of people's memories. They listened to the inner monologues of passengers in different poses on the subway. While observing the filming process of the film crew, they recalled the trauma that Berlin suffered during World War II...
Dan Mill met Marion, the stuntman of the circus. She has a pair of wings on her body, resembling a mortal angel, complaining, "Wearing these burdens, how can I fly", while doing various difficult movements on a swing suspended high in the sky .
But the circus was facing bankruptcy due to poor management, and Marion was full of distress. She loved the profession of flying on a swing, but had to say goodbye to it. Marion’s thoughts attracted Dan Mill’s sympathy. This beautiful angel actor moved Dan Mill’s heart. He decided to change from an immortal angel to a mortal mortal, in order to pursue a happy love and experience The feelings in the world.
So Danmir chose to become a man and truly fell into the world. He excitedly tasted his first sip of coffee, smoked his first cigarette, ate his first meal, and excitedly confirmed the names of each color to passers-by. His world is finally no longer black and white and tasteless, colors and tastes continue to flood him.
In the process of searching for Marion, Dan Mill was helped by other angels who had already become mortals. He found that he was not alone, and Cassirer watched Danmir's love journey silently. In the end, Dan Mill met Marion during the Nick Cave band performance. Later in the bar, Marion also fell in love with Dan Mill.
2. Audiovisual language features
"Under the Berlin Sky" is a poetic film with both sadness and passion for life. The first half of the film is dominated by black and white images (because angels cannot see colors, the world is black and white), depicting angels pitying loneliness and lonely and tired mortals, and showing us the scarred Berlin through the eyes of angels. In the second half of the film, the picture immediately turned into full color, telling the story of the angels after descending to the earth experience the world and feel unremittingly searching for love.
However, in the black and white images in the first half of the film, the director occasionally inserted colored shots, which represent the perspective of humans. This way of dealing with subjective colors highlights the difference between angels and mortals to the greatest extent, and also allows us to better examine our daily lives from the perspective of angels.
Henri Alekan, the director of photography, has a smooth and agile motion lens. It seems to be free from all the shackles of reality, able to cruise in the air freely and smartly, just like the consciousness of an angel who wanders freely. The camera here seems to have become the angel itself, leading the viewers to experience the world.
In terms of editing, the film also uses subjective transitions. Because according to the settings in the script, the angel can fly at high speed against the wind, so when the scene changes, there are often shots that quickly approach and switch quickly. For example, in the film a group of fast-switching shots of the Berlin tramp at night, they all fit the angel's ability to move quickly.
Angels also have a key ability that cannot be ignored-mind reading. The director creatively used subjective sound. Such as the whispering voices of countless people in the opening movie, the monologues of men and women, old and young, and a sentence that every passenger can hear on the subway, all demonstrate the angel's mind-reading ability. The angels in the film can even hear the sound of radio waves—the angels circled the radio tower and heard the sounds of different radio stations.
In addition, in the scene of the library, the camera swayed past readers, and we heard everyone's thoughts whispering in various timbres and languages. And when the camera enters the part where the score is played in the library, the technique changes accordingly-the inner voice suddenly becomes a strong harmony composed of the instrument and the vocal music, which means that the reader is reading a different piece of music.
The film’s screenwriter and the famous Austrian writer Peter Handke described his childhood poem "Lied Vom Kindsein" (Childhood Song) throughout the film. The narration, verses and soundtrack are organically integrated, allowing the beauty of German to be fully revealed. , And diffuse the innocence of children in the film, adding a touch of melancholy nostalgia.
3. Berlin in "Under the Berlin Sky"
Berlin, the most German city, is where the story of "Under the Sphere of Berlin" took place. And several landmark buildings in Berlin played a pivotal role in the film.
The first landmark that appears in the film is Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche). Two angels live in the vault of this church, overlooking Berlin.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was built from 1891 to 1895. It was ordered by Kaiser Wilhelm II to commemorate his passing grandfather, the first Emperor Wilhelm I of the German Empire. It is a neo-Romanesque building with Gothic elements. In World War II, allied bombers dropped countless bombs on Berlin. As a political and military target, no buildings in Berlin were spared because they belonged to historical and cultural heritage. On the night of November 22, 1943, the 113-meter-high bell tower spire was destroyed in an air raid, leaving only 68 meters, so it has since been vividly called the "Broken Roof Church".
After World War II, the West German government planned to demolish the church that had been bombed into ruins and rebuild it. However, this plan aroused opposition from the citizens of Berlin, who wanted to keep the remains of the old church as a memorial. In the end, the two sides reached a compromise. The remains of the 68-meter-high old church bell tower were preserved, and the site was set up as a memorial to warn future generations of the dangers of war.
An old man in the movie repeatedly recalls the sighing square, which is Berlin's Potsdamer Platz (Potsdamer Platz). The original Potsdamer Platz was only a crossroad. Later, the Potsdam Railway Station was built here, which developed into one of the busiest and busiest central areas in Berlin, and became synonymous with the vibrant urban life of the capital. But in the Second World War, the square was severely damaged.
After the war, Potsdamer Platz was located at the junction of the jurisdictions of the four occupying powers: the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. In 1961, the new Berlin Wall also crossed the square. The once prosperous city center has become a quarantine without people.
Until the 1990s, a Daimler area (das Daimler-Areal) was built here. The area includes office buildings, residential buildings, theaters, casinos, restaurants and other architectural facilities. Many high-rise buildings in Berlin are concentrated here. Here, in addition to the high-rise buildings in the Daimler area, the Sony Center also firmly grasps the visitors’ eyes with its seven buildings surrounded by a unique shape. The roof of the central area surrounded by the buildings is open-air. The tent shape, standing quietly under the bright lights at night, has become one of the most beautiful night scenes in Berlin.
An important scene in the film appeared in the library. This library is the Haus Potsdamer Straße branch of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
The Berlin National Library is the largest comprehensive national library in Germany, with a collection of more than 10 million books. Today's Berlin National Library is composed of two parts. It is located in Building No. 1 on the Lower Linden Street. It mainly collects historical books up to 1955. Building No. 2 on Potsdamer Strasse, built in 1978, is mainly responsible for the functions of lending and a large information library.
The Berlin Wall (Berliner Mauer) in the film is not only a symbol of the division of Germany, but also a metaphor for the angel Dan Mill's pursuit and yearning for a colorful human life. The place where Dan Mill fell into the world was the open space in front of the graffiti-painted Berlin Wall.
This graffiti is the work of French artist Thierry Noir, who is good at using bright colors to outline cartoon characters. His graffiti paintings on the Berlin Wall are one kilometer long.
In the 1980s, the western side of the Berlin Wall was covered with all kinds of brightly colored graffiti, while the eastern side was darkened due to strict security. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, artists from all over the world poured into East Germany and turned it into their own creative paradise. However, due to the limited walls, artists have to cover the paintings of their predecessors from time to time and make new creations on the basis of them. Therefore, many very symbolic graffiti can only be "flip in the air". Today, many graffiti creations that once made a sensation no longer exist.
4. Director's Introduction
Wim Wenders, born on August 14, 1945 in Dusseldorf, Germany, worked with Reiner Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Volker Sch Rondorf is also known as the "Four New German Films".
Because of his love for American road films and western films, Wim Wenders successively filmed "Alice in the City", "Broken Road" and "The King of Highways" in 1974-76. The advent of the "Highway Trilogy" also allowed Wenders to create his own style. After several years of trial and error, Wenders finally created two classics, Paris, Texas (1984) and Under the Sky in Berlin (1987), which won awards in Cannes. After that, Wenders also made films such as "Until the End of the World" (1991), "The End of the World" (1993), and "The Story of Lisbon" (1994). From the end of the 1990s to the present, Wenders's works are mostly documentaries, such as "Floating Lives of Music" (1999), "Pina" (2011), "Salt of the Earth" (2014), etc.
Most of Wenders's films are quiet, slow and melancholic. The protagonists in the film seem to be in a state of "on the road" forever, wandering, wandering, roaming, walking between the country and the city. And these endless roaming processes are often presented in a long slowly panning lens, as if the viewer's vision is pitching and wandering. Influenced by the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, Wenders also prefers to use empty shots, which also adds a touch of calmness to his films. The emphasis on images and viewing has earned Wenders the reputation of "The Eyes of New German Films".
There is always a lingering feeling of loneliness in Wenders's works. He is dedicated to presenting the alienation and separation between people in modern urban civilization. The characters in Wenders' movies experience emotional helplessness and inner emptiness, making it difficult to find a lover who truly belongs to them, just like those wanderers who are always searching on the road but still confused and sad. But at the end of most of the works, you can see a bright future and appreciate the warmth that permeates this cold tone.
[Attached] The German-Chinese version of the classic poem "Childhood Poems" in the film and the pronunciation of the whole German poem that I recite
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