After the explosion of talent and excitement in the 1960s and 70s, Hollywood and cinema in general experienced a slump in the 1980s. It was without a doubt the most dull decade in film history. Hollywood studio fare became more standardized, most movies were too long, bloated and unambitious, and let’s not even get started on the dreadful fashions and women’s frizzed hairstyles.
In the 1980s, there were also battles between home entertainment formats over what the future would look like. “content.” Home recording on VHS was widespread by the late 1970s, LaserDiscs had their moment shortly thereafter, the CD tidal wave occurred in the early ‘80s, video rentals shops soon followed and DVDs hit it big in 1996-97, surpassing VHS use by 2003. It’s easy to find anything online or on your TV.
Wim Wim Wenders, a German director and producer, brought along a video camera to document the anxiety and malaise that he observed in the film industry. In May 1982, Wim Wenders attended the 35th Cannes Film Festival. HammettWas in competition.
Wenders set up his camera inside the Martinez Hotel’s unoccupied only room. He speculated that nobody would ever want to stay in room 666. “number of the beast”) and invited 15 directors from around the world—several of them also there with films in competition—to expound on the future of cinema by responding to the question, “Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?”
The interlocutor was not present in the room. Guests were required to just sit down, flip on the switch to record the video, and then speak to the camera for 10 minutes. Some spoke for a few seconds, while Jean-Luc Godard had his entire film recorded. PassionThat year, the winner was the only one to make it all the way. The result was a 46-minute documentary called—what else—Room 666The online publication is called. It’s worth a look.
Godard, who was unable to walk due to a tennis injury, opened the discussion by stating that even though he is now, “Television and movies are more and more the same.”Paul Morrissey, Warhol house director, argued that traditional cinematic presentation was the best. “on the way out. The intrusion of the director did not exist in television,”The result is that “People exist on television, and it’s better.”
Romain Goupil, a French young director, agreed with these sentiments. “I do feel that cinema as we know it is on the way out,”And that’s it! “cumbersome and time-consuming aspects of production will lessen and disappear.”
Rainer Werner, a German genius, died less than one month later at the age of 37. He was very clear about the situation. “One strand of cinema—sensation-oriented cinema, which tends to colossal and bombastic, you can definitely see that. On the other hand, there is very individual cinema, or national cinema of individual filmmakers, which is far more important today than cinema which is indistinguishable from television.”
Steven Spielberg was just 35 years old at the time, and was poised to make the world premiere. E.T. Extra-TerrestrialOn closing night at Cannes, Spielberg spoke about how the film had begun its rise to the top of the box office and became the highest-grossing film ever. Spielberg declared himself to be “one of the last of the optimists about the history and the future of the motion picture industry. E.T. cost $10.5 million. I only have to be very, very optimistic that movies are going to expand,”He stated. “I want a picture that’s going to please everybody. And of course that’s impossible.”
There were numerous others who chimed in on the question posed by Wenders but, in the end, only two, true visionaries, Werner Herzog and Michelangelo Antonioni—both of them insightful, idiosyncratic thinkers and go-their-own-way mavericks of great international standing—had genuinely insightful and original takes on the subject posed by their interrogator.
Herzog stated at the beginning that she was typically idiosyncratic. “To answer a question like that you have to take your shoes off,”And so he did. Then he launched into a maverick version: “I don’t see the situation in such a dramatic way as the question seems to imply. I feel that we aren’t all that dependent on television. Film aesthetic is something apart and separate. TV is a kind of jukebox, you’re never inside the film itself, you have a sort of mobile position as a viewer. And you can switch it off. You can’t switch off a cinema. I’m not at all worried.”
“On a walk in New York, a friend told me how worried he was about everything being taken over by video and television. I expect soon you’ll be able to choose vegetables in the supermarket by video camera or by pressing buttons on your telephone or your computer, you can order your meal. It probably won’t be long before you can draw money out of the bank via video or (pointing to the TV) this medium here.”This was 39 year ago. Little did he know.
“I’m not so worried about camera or film,”He continued to support his friend. “I said to him because whatever happens there, that’s not where life happens. Life is going on somewhere else. Wherever life is dynamic, wherever life touches us most directly, that’s where you’ll find the cinema. And that’s what will survive. Only that will always survive.”
Antonioni took it a step further. “It is true that the existence of cinema is threatened. There are certain aspects to this problem that can’t be denied. Television has a profound effect on everyone’s mentality and their perceptions. It is important to be able to adapt to the changing entertainment needs of the future. We all know that there are forms of reproduction, new technologies like the magnetic tape which will probably come to replace traditional film stock which no longer meets today’s requirements. Scorsese has pointed out that color film fades over time….I believe that with the new technologies, like the electronic system and many others like lasers, who knows, or others that are yet to be invented. …The audience is growing and this problem will be resolved.
“We are still attached to film. It is possible, however, that this feeling may disappear with the acquisition new technologies like magnetic tape. In reality there is always a gap between today and tomorrow’s mentality that we can’t foresee….We have to think of a future that will probably never end. We have to think of the viewer’s needs in the future. I am not pessimistic. I’m sure that the possibilities of video will teach us different ways of think about ourselves.
“It’s difficult to talk about the future of cinema,” Antonioni insisted. “Probably, widely, high-quality video cassettes will soon bring film into people’s houses. The current structures will be gone and we won’t need to go to the cinema anymore. Not as quickly and easily as that suggests, but it will happen….The change is inevitable, and we can’t do anything to prevent it. We will only have one thing to do—we will need to adapt.
“Our own organism will evolve. Who knows what lies in store for us? The future will present itself with unimaginable ruthlessness. But we can guess what it would be. My feeling is that it won’t be all that hard to transform us all into new men better adapted to our new technologies. That is all I have to say.”