Changes in the world of cinema worry and fascinate many people. At major festivals above all else. They have a lot to lose if their base collapses. Existential debates rage behind the scenes of the Palace. In order to probe the pea puree in this anniversary cuvée, Cannes organized a symposium on Tuesday and Wednesday bringing together filmmakers responsible for debating the thorny questions. Who are we ? Where are we going ? In what state I wander ?
At the microphone in front of us, in the conference room, big names listened to the patient, including Guillermo del Toro, omnipresent, at the origin of the exercise, Costa-Gavras, Claude Lelouch, Michel Hazanavicius, Gaspar Noé, Paolo Sorrentino, and others. A very masculine areopagus, it is clear. With answers that necessarily overlapped. Everyone agrees on one point: people will always want to be told stories and see films, yes, but how? Between nostalgia and the desire to try new avenues, they skate, launch ideas, call for the survival of cinemas, some don’t have much new to contribute, others, yes.
Do not become “pale”
In the eyes of Guillermo del Toro: “The future will be different, whether or not we take it as a slap in the face. This era is similar to that of the passage between the silent and the speaking. » For the filmmaker of The Shape of Water, it took a pandemic to shake everything up, but the storytellers’ commitment to the past and the future is all the stronger. “We are losing our memory faster than ever, we have to question ourselves. »
In his opinion, a filmmaker must remain fearless when everything comes up against him, while helping the rising generation to discover works like Vertigo of Hitchcock, leaving him his space of freedom. “Every time we close the door on something, we lose. If the great films come from streamers, the artistic side must be defended there. Young people are fresher, smarter than us, and youth should not be domesticated. The important thing is to do what we like, to renew ourselves. If we always do the same thing, we become pale. »
Claude Lelouch is a being of hope and memory. “When cinema moved on to sound, color, scope, each invention created a new wave,” he says. The laptop, I’ve dreamed of it all my life. (With that, his rang.) But I’m a big believer in the future of the big screen. People are going to get tired of the dictatorship of all these platforms and series. The assembled audience, which is part of the show, will win. »
The filmmaker Costa-Gavras, also at the head of the Cinémathèque française, has few illusions on his side: “We approach cinema in a different way than before COVID. And the halls took a heavy blow. But cinema calls for a passion that makes the public experience feelings. There is a new audience at the Cinémathèque. We do not know where he draws his references, but he is there. Upstream, it is necessary to broaden the teaching of cinema. »
“Getting out of shot, reverse shot”
Gaspar Noé (Vortex) finds that we put too much on the back of the COVID. The confinement will have allowed him to review two classics of the seventh art per day. “I regained a taste for cinema thanks to this surge of fear,” he confesses. With pirate platforms, private film libraries online, it is easier today than before to have access to these films, but for those who manufacture and market them, the doors are being reduced. Today, a young person must combine with a real saturation of the image, between the pubs, and the news. It’s now or never for us to play with language, to get out of the shot, reverse shot. TV does things the conventional way even when it experiments. Few images surprise you. The big screen remains unbeatable. »
Gaspar Noé displays fears in the face of the morality of the day. It collects and stores movies on Blu-ray discs. “When catalogs change buyers, if one of their films is considered racist, they put it under the carpet. In 20 or 30 years, you don’t know what they will do with these works. One day, they will disappear, and the platforms will only take films for their image and for the public. »
Paolo Sorrentino stood out in the cinema, directed television films, shot God’s hand for Netflix. He prefers, all things considered, the old-fashioned method. “The Netflix movie was good for Netflix, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. To work for TV is to drop solid, impressive images that wouldn’t pass the screen. The directors have been subjected to an overdose between cinema, TV, platforms. It’s a false opportunity. A good film takes time, and you have to get back to it. But platform investments are not going enough to young directors, who could explore new languages. »
Solve the square of the circle in a symposium? Impossible. Everyone threw their poles at Cannes, expressed their anxieties, observed the future without a crystal ball, trying to grasp a turbulent era that is changing the face and language of the seventh art. This kind of brainstorming has its limits and its strengths, but it allows players in the field to stick together after the long Covid eclipse. The great Festival, in mutation itself, will have offered them that.
Odile Tremblay is the guest of the Cannes Film Festival.