Lost in Translation

I was flabbergasted last night to learn that my fellow residents in the Casa de los Tres Mundos--Germans and Austrians all--had not only not seen, but had never heard of Wim Wender's "Wings of Desire." This shock came to me as we sat together and watched the last two thirds of "City of Angels," the hideous American remake starring Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan. Admittedly they are all quite a bit younger that me and "Wings of Desire" did come out in the late 1980s, but it is like a 25-year-old American having never heard of "Blue Velvet."

I suppose it was just an old-fogey moment, for I know from my own students that if they missed a movie when it came out, there's almost no chance they saw it after that, even if it was a huge hit. Yet it still seems utterly shocking. Perhaps what made it all the worse was that their introduction to this classic if imperfect film was through a tawdry and melodramatic Hollywood remake.