Camera 666

In light of the dominance of television and the rise of the VCR by 1982, Wim Wenders sounds the alarm that cinema may be dying, and asks a number of famous directors to comment on that in this short documentary, ominously putting a TV on over their shoulder in the background as they do so. What we get is an impressive collection of directors, but it's a mixed bag as to what they actually have to say. Oh, there are some prescient comments, for example, the prediction of larger screens in the home, making theaters less important, or that studios interested in profits driving films to be more 'for the masses' (and this, long before the MCU), or that technology will allow you to buy vegetables by pushing a few buttons. But there is also a lot of drab commentary, overstating the doom and gloom, and also many segments that are very short and really don't add anything. Not surprisingly, Jean-Luc Godard is the most tedious as he rambles pretentiously through half-baked points, and Steven Spielberg is the most optimistic. Spielberg expresses the view that filmmakers have to make do with the time they live in, specifically as it relates to budgeting, and then mostly speaks in terms of cash, which was pretty tone deaf to what he was being asked about. Although hell, to him cinema wasn't dying at all, it was thriving. And to be fair, there have been a lot of incredible films since this documentary, so it is true that artists adapt.

Wim Wenders was curious at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival about the future of cinema. At the time it was at the end, or just a change, in a time in film-making when it seemed like anything was possible. The 1970's saw New-Waves in America and Germany, plus some original talent from France (Akerman), Italy (Bertolucci and Wertmuller), and elsewhere, but by 1982 things seemed a little bleak, apparently. Commercialism was rising high, and Steven Spielberg's friend George Lucas was unintentionally leading the charge to a more Blockbuster-oriented cinema worldwide, relegating art to the 'art-houses'. So, Wenders brought in a bunch of filmmakers to talk, right to the camera, on their thoughts about the future in film, if there was one, what about TV, etc.

We get two extremes of thought and response, actually, between two icons of cinema for different reasons: Jean-Luc Godard and Steven Spielberg. While Godard keeps looking at the letter, giving one an odd impression (he's the first interview) that he's just reading from the text and going on in messages that, yeah, film is screwed but it still is different from TV, Spielberg is more optimistic but cautious in making sure to take into account the finance of film, the figures. In-between these two figures, one an obtuse intellectual and the other a classic showman, we get a variety of thoughts and takes, some more pessimistic then others. One of the best interviews comes from Werner Herzog, who decides he must take off his shoes and socks before the interview because of the depth of the question (he also turns off the TV in the room, which no one else does).

Sadly, we also see some of the decline right in the room. One of the titans of cinema from the 'New-Wave' period, Michelangelo Antonioni, thinks cinema can evolve but that it will probably die at some point because of new mediums like video (oh if he only knew). And another, Fassbinder, looks tired and bloated, giving a half-assed if interesting answer (he would die a couple of months later). Some others give a dour impression, like Paul Morrissey, but it's not altogether unhopeful words said. In fact what it amounts to, for Wenders, is a realistic assessment of cinema as it would progress in the 1980's and beyond: artists would have to be careful, or just be put into more constricting circumstances, as the medium expands and it changes the way people see movies.

Chambre 666 (1982) is a fascinating time capsule of a film. During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders, a visionary in his own right, set up a static camera in room 666 of the Hotel Martinez and invited a who's who of filmmaking - Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Maroun Bagdadi, Steven Spielberg, Michelangelo Antonioni, and even Yilmaz Güney (via voice message) - to ponder the future of cinema.

Wenders presented each director with a list of questions, most notably, "Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?" Each had one 16mm reel (roughly 11 minutes) to respond. The result is a captivating montage of insights, anxieties, and predictions from some of the most influential figures in film history.

This exercise should be repeated every decade, I think. And every ten years, the participants should be confronted with their previous responses, their reactions captured on film.

We're witnessing some of the greatest minds of our time grappling with the future of their art form, and it's a truly bizarre feeling. It's like a time capsule, a glimpse into the past that forces us to reflect on the present.

Wim Wenders, you genius.

My review was written in July 1984 after watching the film at a Manhattan screening room.

Filmed at the Cannes Film Festival in 192, and shown in a shorter version on French tv that year, Wim Wenders' "Room 666" is an informative and often funny cinematic stunt. Pic is scheduled for release later this year in tandem with a longer docu by Wenders about Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, tentatively titled "Tokyo".

Wenders' concept, simple yet novel, was to present a written list of questions on the future of cinema and its relationship to tv technology to a large number of film directors attending the Cannes Fest, admit them one by one to a hotel room, containing a tape recorder and a pre-set 16mm camera holding one reel of film. With identical compositional framing, each participant is seated in a chair by a window, with a tv set playing next to him, its sound turned off, and permitted complete freedom (other than the time constraint imposed by the single film reel) to present a monolog on camera.

Wenders edited the results, comically choking off the dullards with a sudden blackout (minimalist filmmaking's equivalent to vaudeville tradition's "Get the hook!") and adding a brief, poetic framing story to put everything into context: a shot of an aged cedar standing by the highway, a tree old enough to have seen the entire history of photography, and cinema as well.

Stars of this format emerge as Jean-Luc Godard and Steven Spielberg, each one arguably the key director of, respectively, the '60s and the current decade. Godard addresses with both provocative insight and consierable background the issue of technological change, noting how tv esthetics are replacing cinematic standards. Stating that advertising-supported tv has adopted the representational and editing methods of Sergei Eisentstein's classic "Potemkin", he notes that one-minute "Potemkin"-style commercials work at that length because if they were longer they would face the problem of having to tell the truth about the product involved.

Addressing the tendency toward super-production films and tv miniseries, he notes that in the U. S. the trend to make just one important film, in which the title is the key, not the content. The idea, per Godard, is to shoot less film but release more of it (e.g.ll, lthe miniserires version) than in the past.

Spielberg begins his discourse with some self-serving analysis of how the inflation of film budgets has affected him since the "Jaws" days, but segues into several pointed and valuable observations concerning the trends for studio heads to approve only pictures made "to please everybody", leaving no room for personal films. His segment is definitely an interesting one and takes "Room 666" out of the esoteric territory earmarked by most of the other helmers, each speaking for the most part in his or her native tongue (with English subtitles).

Werner Herzog is the only subject to direct himself actively, turning off the nearby tv set, taking off his shoes and socks, and even dramatically ending his spot by placing a couch pillow over the camera lens. He has no fear of tv, which he compaes to a jukebox: "tv never absorbs you like a movie; you can't turn off the cinema" is the subtilted translation. The late Rainer Werner Fassbinder, looking and sounding weary, defends personal and national-identity cinema against the current trend towards sensationalism in films.

Other speakers often resemble their film output, with Michelangelo Antonioni pacing around the room and asking numerous unanswerable questions, repeatedly stressing what he doesn't know; Monte Hellman proving to be as laconic as one of his pictures; and Paul Morrissey, acting glib yet sincere in his favoring of tv ovr filmmaking since the "intrusion of the director does not exist on tv" and because tv stresses people and characters.

Unfortunately, the third-world directors on view seem hung up with their own parochial issues and do not address Wenders' philosophical questions. The two women included, New York's Susan Seidelman and Brazil's Ana Carolina, seem a bit flustered and inarticulate, adding little to the discourse.

Minimalist in desing Wenders' experimenal concept works and whets one's appetite for similar projects with other subjects. Failing to obtain the righs to use Bernard Herrmann's soundtrack music from "North by Northwest" in the background (reportedly they would have costg more than the filming did), he opted for out-tracks by Jurgen Knieper, leftover from his scoes of other Wenders features. They add a note of melancholy to link "Room 666" with the director's more familiar fictional odysseys.

Chambre 666 (1982)

*** (out of 4)

Wim Winders directed this somewhat interesting documentary filmed during the 1982 Cannes Fil Festival. Winders set up a camera in a hotel room and he'd ask various directors to come in and say what they thought about the future of cinema. Werner Herzog, Steven Spielberg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Paul Morrissey and various others take part and offer their thoughts on the subject. The opinions very from Herzog not fearing the future to Spielberg showing high concern over the budgets of big movies, which are forcing studios to cut back on smaller films. It's funny because he speaks of being worried about the $10 million it took to film E.T., which he says could cost $18 million in a few years. It's also interesting to hear Herzog "predict" that one day you might be able to order movies through a computer or television. There's nothing technically good about this 45-minute film but it's interesting none the less.