Schizo Miracles

A new Samuel Fuller box set shows off Charlie Kaufman-esque gems and hard-boiled noir tales.

Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire” (1987) was self-defined as a miracle movie by its very concept, and it remains one of its decade’s most beloved art films, so it has been overdue for the new Criterionizing it has now received, packing, it should be said, a fat essay by yours truly. Unquestionably Wenders’ career peak, the movie needs no case to be made for it, but I make mine in any case, and so without being too redundant, I can only say here that it is a film that equates cinema with angelhood, moviewatching with heaven, and does it so enchantingly it stands as arguably the most revivifying portrait of human empathy and its challenges that has been made in the last half-century.

German movies since the end of WWII have all struggled with the legacy left to them by Nazism, and for the most part, the struggle has been in vain; attempts to assimilate or rationalize or explain recent history have reeked of self-defense or merely new-generational disdain. (Herzog stayed away altogether, while Fassbinder loitered on the fringes and in the bedrooms.) Only “Wings of Desire,” of German films about Germany, had the nerve and wisdom and capacity of heart to embrace a present that is more vital than the Third Reich-poisoned past. German cinema wasn’t reborn exactly – more desperate and waffling films about the ‘30s-‘40s period are being made than ever before – but the path out of darkness was finally marked.

“The Samuel Fuller Collection” (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) is now available on DVD; “Wings of Desire” (Criterion Collection) is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

[Additional photo: Broderick Crawford in "Scandal Sheet," Columbia Pictures, 1952]

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