Wings of Fame (1990)

Directed by Otakar Votocek; produced by Laurens Geels and Dick Maas

World-renowned movie actor Cesar Valentin (Peter O’Toole) is murdered by frustrated writer Brian Smith (Colin Firth), who is then accidentally killed, and both end up, in the after-life, at a hotel for famous people. Tied by events both before and subsequent to death, the pair must make sense of their new situation and of each other.

As may be discerned from the brief synopsis above, Wings of Fame brings to the screen an intriguing premise. But that, alas, is all it brings. This is, in fact, what I call a ‘premise movie’, a film the makers of which had a good idea and no notion of what to do with it – but went ahead and made it anyway. Indeed, I strongly suspect that the movie was begun with the hopes of a script following, rather than the achievement of one.

There is a superficial exploration of fame and notoriety: a major aspect of existence in the hotel is that the quality of one’s lodgings and service depends upon how well one is known on Earth. An artist, for instance, is downgraded to a shabby attic room because his paintings are no longer valued, while a poet is re-discovered, and is thus moved to better quarters. As well, Valentin eventually talks about how much he loved being recognised. But the treatment of fame is never more than shallow. A more glaring example of this fleeting investigation of fame is Firth’s character’s name: common, ordinary Smith, though his pen-name is a striking triple-barrelled moniker; it’s all quite obvious.

Even less expansive is the explanation of the after-life, why there is a hotel for famous people and what they are doing there. Smith asks at one point, “Where are the Shakespeares, the Gallileos?” The answer to this is simply, “I don’t know.” Indeed, despicable killers are mixed up with vain writers, pop stars with athletes. What they are to do in their hotel, why they are there, what its purpose is, are questions handled as deeply as those regarding fame, as if the creators of the after-life put as much thought into their work as the creators of the film.

To be fair, cinematic after-life does not always need elucidation. It is often utilized as a background for those present to learn about themselves, to grow in a way they never did on Earth. But the people we meet are just as empty, boring and worthless as they were when alive; one character suggests that the hotel is Hell. Considering the men and women there, I would not dispute the suggestion.

There is little thought given in the script to, well, anything, it seems. One young woman (Marie Trintignant) doesn’t recall her existence on Earth, while everybody else does. She is also the only one who doesn’t believe she is dead, whereas all others instinctively realise it. Why is she different? Sometimes people are returned to Earth to live again; this is done on the basis of a lottery. No reason is given for this addendum to the after-life. The person returned has the right to take someone with him. This rule appears to have been included, self-consciously, in the script to create tension as to who the chosen person will select, when the time comes. If so, it fails in its objective.

Those working at the hotel have powers beyond those of mortals, yet at one point, the manager (Walter Gotell) seems to be a stiffened corpse, only to be re-animated later. What was the point of this? There are attempts at humour, featuring revolutionaries continually trying to blow things up, but these merely serve to bewilder further: can people be killed, hurt, injured, in the after-life? If injured, how badly? There is one man seen continually roller-skating through the corridors. One could almost hear the writers suggesting this as if it would cause uproarious laughter among the audience. It doesn’t.

Even the connection between the two leads is nonsensical. Valentin stole Smith’s unpublished manuscript, and passed it off as his autobiography. You may discern a puzzle here: had Smith written his own life-story, only to have Valentin steal it? It seems unlikely, as Smith is only 29 years old, and could hardly have accumulated the experiences that Valentin could then claim as his own. Smith knew the real events of Valentin’s life, as opposed to what the latter published, so surely any number of those who write about the famous could have shown Valentin’s ‘autobiography’ as false. And how did Valentin get Smith’s book in the first place? Why would Smith send it to a film-actor? Why would a film-actor steal it?

The very title Wings of Fame is confusing. Why ‘wings’, unless to conjure up comparisons with Wim Wenders’s acclaimed Wings of Desire, released three years previous to Wings of Fame? If so, the movies’ relationship would be one of contrasts, rather than comparisons. And such a small thing as placing the opening in 1966 has little point, unless to provide the present as the setting for some characters’ return to Earth.

What possibly could have been an interesting, indeed, thought-provoking film becomes, almost immediately, a disaster, filled with disconnected and addled events, unlikeable people and pointless episodes. Wings of Fame makes the Rambo movies look as complex as Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu.