"""There are angels on the streets of Berlin"" in Wim Wenders' beautiful and evocative masterpiece (co-written with Peter Handke), a melancholy and meditative contemplation of human life and emotion as seen through the eyes of two angels -- Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander). Angels are unseen witnesses to human affairs and hover over human beings -- listening to their thoughts, lending comfort to the despairing, providing hope to the dying. To adults they cannot be seen, but children can feel their unseen presence. Angels can listen but cannot interfere in any way with human affairs. Damiel and Cassiel are two of the many angels who have witnessed the state of human affairs in Berlin. Having performed their labors since the inception of mankind, Damiel and Cassiel are growing a bit weary of their tasks. Damiel, perhaps, a bit more so: ""Instead of hovering, I'd like to feel some weight on me,"" he says to Cassiel. The two angels latch on to two kindred souls among the multitude of cacophonous voices in Berlin. Cassiel finds himself returning to Homer (Curt Bois), an aged writer whose readers have abandoned him and who no longer writes. Damiel is attracted to svelte and beautiful French trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), who also finds herself alone and without an audience when her circus folds. When the angels walk around a movie set, Peter Falk (playing himself) senses their presence, ""I can't see you, but I know you're here."" Speaking to the unseen (by him) Damiel, he seduces him to the delights of being alive, ""To smoke, and have coffee. And if you do it together . . . it's fantastic."" Damiel, who has fallen in love with Marion, decides to take the plunge to pain, sadness, and death and become a human being, Cassiel observing it all from atop a looming statue. Now a human being, Damiel must somehow find Marion and express his love to her."