Cinephilia in the 24½th Century

[Adam]

This thread is about the future

Obviously a lot of this is just impossible abject guesswork, but what touchstone films/filmmakers from the past century or so do you think will remain especially required viewing for all budding cinéastes, say, one hundred years from now? And in that same vein, what stone-cold classics do you predict will fade off into the ether?

Thinking about this kinda stuff a fair bit lately. Over the past couple of years, I've been trying to fill in my most egregious cinematic blind spots and it's just this incredibly daunting thing. I can't imagine how it's going to look for like-minded folks even fifty years from now. Clearly the internet and developments in home video and whatnot have made everything easier, but it's still ridiculous. Even amongst most of you guys, you who devote such a huge portion of your lives to film, there are loads of areas you all still need to round out. I mean Qrazy came dangerously close to going a lifetime without seeing Pretty Woman (!!!)

Add to all that the fact that advancements in technology could mean all kinds of absurd things for the way we take in our movies in the future. At what point do people living in their Moon crater condos look at pre-3D films in the same way we look at silents?

And when is Smell-O-Vision going to make its triumphant return?

[Spaceman Spiff]

Film will eventually evolve into Spacetime Six.

[Qrazy]

I mean Qrazy came dangerously close to going a lifetime without seeing Pretty Woman (!!!)

Did you get around to reading my review of it?


Add to all that the fact that advancements in technology could mean all kinds of absurd things for the way we take in our movies in the future. At what point do people living in their Moon crater condos look at pre-3D films in the same way we look at silents?

And when is Smell-O-Vision going to make its triumphant return?

Given the path videogames have taken over the years and now film is taking with 3D I could totally see the Star Trek holo-rooms becoming a reality someday. A fully immersive 3D environment that can effect all five senses... then again perhaps it would be virtual reality instead. People don't want to actually move their bodies through a virual world unless it was for the sake of fun exercise... but not like jumping and diving and fighting crime. It's too hard on the body. For the adventure element avatars would work better, so we'd have something like The Matrix minus the inability to jack out.

[StanleyK]

I think- nay, I'm positive Steven Spielberg will have a reputation similar to Alfred Hitchcock's, and that PT Anderson will have one similar to Kubrick's.

[Ezee E]

Hitch, Spielberg, and Kubrick are kind of their own deal though.

[ledfloyd]

I think- nay, I'm positive Steven Spielberg will have a reputation similar to Alfred Hitchcock's, and that PT Anderson will have one similar to Kubrick's.
i agree with you on spielberg. i'm not certain PTA's films will stand the test of time. there will be blood probably will. but i'm more dubious about the prospects of boogie nights and magnolia.

it's so hard to say. there are plenty of films that didn't do good upon release that are now hailed as 'one of the best films ever made'. things like the wizard of oz and metropolis. makes you wonder what poorly received film will be a classic 70 years from now. or if it's even possible for anything to slip under the radar with the amount of coverage there is on even the smallest movies these days.

i'd like to think the films of charlie kaufman and the coen brothers will stand the test of time, but it's possible their films are too tied into a current sensibility that won't be en vogue 100 years from now.

the only filmmakers i feel relatively certain will still be discussed in the year 2100 are steven spielberg and pixar. the combination of critical and financial success they've makes it seem unlikely they'll fall by the wayside. perhaps the lord of the rings trilogy as well.

[balmakboor]

I think James Cameron will be included in future film history books based on his astounding mixture of financial and critical success combined with his pioneering uses of digital technology.

[baby doll]

For movies to be remembered, they have to be available. With torrenting, a staggering number of previously unavailable films that have suddenly become available in the last few years: Out 1, La Maman et la putain, Jeanne Dielman. (Akerman's films subsequently came out on DVD, but I saw it for the first time on my computer.) It seems that as time goes by, and more and more films are made, more and more old ones also become available. (Jonathan Rosenbaum remarked a few years ago that there are people in their twenties who know as much about cinema as he did in his forties.) So, where does this hyper-availability of movies take us? Personally, I've tended to rely on auteurism as a basis for what to see and what not to see, which is why it's taken me longer to get around to certain Hollywood classics (The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy) whose directors aren't generally considered auteurs. In the terms put forward by QuintÃ*n in Cinema-Scope (http://cinema-scope.com/wordpress/?page_id=840) a few years back, I guess that makes me an anorexic auteurist ("Let's keep only the good part of the beef"--and in the case of the films by Nicols and Schlesinger cited above, that would mean the Nouvelle Vague films that inspired their style). Along these lines, as certain authors and novels come to stand in for their country's entire output (i.e., Cervantes in Spain, Joyce in Ireland), national cinemas will increasingly be defined by certain singular auteurs. In a sense, this is how it should be. I mean, who cares about Canadian cinema, except for Cronenberg, Egoyan, Maddin, and Snow? Or for that matter, who wants to watch any New Zealand films other than Jane Campion's? Or Taiwanese films before the mid-80s New Wave of Hou, Wu Nien-jien, and Yang (Tsai came later)?

[Adam]

...national cinemas will increasingly be defined by certain singular auteurs...

So as you point out, though, isn't this pretty much how it is now?

[baby doll]

So as you point out, though, isn't this pretty much how it is now?Yeah, but I think the pool of auteurs will be winnowed down even more over time. In the case of Japan, Mizoguchi's stock has been in decline for like fifty years, and with Kurosawa there's a big split between people just discovering Japanese cinema (Rashomon is the greatest thing ever) and hardcore cinephiles (Rashomon is overrated), while Ozu's reputation just goes higher and higher as more of his work becomes widely disseminated. Two countries that might stand as exceptions are the US and France, although in the latter case, it seems to me there's an increasing tendency to celebrate the New Wave at the expense of everything else, especially films made after the initial flurry ('58-'64-ish), as if film production in France simply ceased--never-mind that there are plenty of filmmakers from that period (Alexandre Astruc, Marcel Hanoun, Luc Moullet, Jean-Daniel Pollet) whose work we can't see.