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Magical Realism In Wim Wenders's Wings Of Desire

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Wim Wenders with full name Ernst Wilhelm Wenders was born in Düsseldorf in August 14,1945. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen. After that he studied medicine in Freiburg and philosophy in Düsseldorf between in the 1963 – 1965. However, he left the university and moved to Paris in 1966 to become a painter. After that, he failed on the entry test at France's national film school IDHEC. He wants to be in film business, he did not give up and studied film at the Munich Film Academy while working as a film critic after directing eight short films. His first film was Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick). In 1978 Wenders moved to Hollywood to direct Hammett, the story of American detective fiction …show more content…

Wings of Desire contains the fundamentals of magical realism to specific details that no likes other films before, or since has managed to accomplish. While simply containing such traits does not automatically make a film superior, Wings of Desire works as a result of these magical realist traits to better illustrate the grander ideas at hand. In the following paragraphs, an investigation and explanation of the magical realism in Wings of Desire will fall into two distinct categories, namely, the technical detail (cinematography, direction, sound and setting), and the narrative detail. As stated before, one of the primary foundations of magical realist art was the changing of perception regarding objects, to see them in a new light. Film can achieve the same target, although it has to work within the added dimension of time and the qualities of actual movement, something that painted art did not. The most important feature of Wings of Desire is that it is filmed in black and white, representing the viewpoints and situations of the angels, whereas only the human viewpoints and situations resort to color. The major artistic coup achieved in the film being black and white is the altering of our perceptions of the objects seen on screen. In full color film our eyes notice bright colors first and then drab or combined background colors second. In the use of black and white film in Wings of Desire, the entire image is drab, thus preventing the viewer from inadvertently focusing on certain objects over others. Instead of just focusing on the character in the foreground, the viewer sees the image on screen as a whole and is inclined to look at ancillary or distant objects and notice small details. Thus the perceptions of all objects in the film are altered or different; perhaps they are now mysterious, endearing or impersonal. The camera is often the first-person view of the

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