Brian Smith (Colin Firth), an angry writer, murders Cesar Valentine (Peter O’Toole), an egotistical actor, and then is killed by a falling light. Both end up in a hotel on a small island, filled with dead celebrities. As people become less famous on Earth, they are moved to smaller and smaller rooms, until they are pushed from the hotel into the vast sea where regular folk slowly fade into oblivion. Both Smith and Valentine become interested in Bianca (Marie Trintignant), a strange but beautiful amnesiac, but this isnât a place where one should get attached to anything.
Film Blanc boomed in the â40s, feel-good films where the afterlife was seen as a benign bureaucracy, films like: Here Comes Mr. Jordan, The Horn Blows at Midnight, and A Matter of Life and Death. Wings of Fame is a Film Blanc, but instead of a benign bureaucracy, the afterlife is a fascist celebrity-oligarchy and nothing feels good. There is no hope nor fairness. Continued existence has nothing to do with good deeds nor nobility, and in the end, as fame is fleeting, so is the reprieve from annihilation. The resident dead psychologist asserts that the island residents can feel jealousy and boredom, but not love, so even the brief reprieve has little to recommend it. Itâs grim, but fascinating. This world is compelling and I want a twenty-part TV series digging into its depths.
Well, this isnât a series. Itâs a small film, shot simply. We get a taste of the world and I wanted more. As this is a movie, it needed a plot, and it has one, more or less. But the plot really doesnât live up to the world, nor can it since the whole point it nothing really happens and you fade away. The love triangle is interesting while it is going on, but leaves you with nothing. And the âendingâ for Brian and Cesar is annoying and doesnât fit with the rest of the film. They shouldnât have any kind of ending, but again, this is a movie so it had to go somewhere. But except for that ending, it doesnât matter that the plot is weak. The plot isnât the point. The individuals are interesting enough, and while this doesnât rank with the top work of either Firth or O’Toole, their B-game is plenty good enough. They give us something to focus on while we are enjoying the painter being moved to smaller and smaller rooms, the anarchists trying (and failing) to make a statement of any kind, and the poet who objects to being moved to larger quarters due to a resurgence of interest in his work.
Wings of Fame flirts with greatness, but comes up short, though for a film thatâs âjustâ very good, it will stay with you.