Wim Wenders Reveals His Rules of Cinema Perfection

Does Wim Wen­ders, one of my favorite direc­tors, make per­fect films? Hard­ly — and there­in, at least for me, lies the appeal. Per­fec­tion strikes me as a sin­gu­lar­ly unin­ter­est­ing goal for art, and Wen­ders has made some of the most inter­est­ing pieces of motion pic­ture art going for the past thir­ty years: Wings of Desire; Paris, Texas; Note­book on Cities and Clothes; Tokyo-Ga. Per­haps, it occurs to me, he has achieved his own kind of very spe­cif­ic, inim­itable per­fec­tion. But if you seek to imi­tate it nev­er­the­less, have a look at “Wim Wen­ders’ Rules of Cin­e­ma Per­fec­tion” above. In this video (actu­al­ly a kind of spot for Stel­la Artois, a brand with which the auteur has worked before), we see humor­ous­ly revealed sev­er­al of Wen­ders’ best film­mak­ing prac­tices: “You need a good title from the begin­ning,” “Con­ti­nu­ity is clear­ly over­rat­ed,” “Try to wel­come and incor­po­rate” the unex­pect­ed, and “If you like foot­ball, don’t shoot dur­ing the world cham­pi­onship.”

If you’ve done your read­ing on Wen­ders, you can prob­a­bly tell that the clip draws from a pub­lished list of the direc­tor’s “50 Gold­en Rules of Film­mak­ing.” Oth­er help­ful rec­om­men­da­tions include “Before you say ‘cut,’ wait five more sec­onds,” “A ‘beau­ti­ful image’ can very well be the worst thing that can hap­pen to a scene,” and “There are no rules.” Will fol­low­ing these if-n0t-rules-then-guide­lines turn you into the next Wim Wen­ders? Unlike­ly. Will drink­ing Stel­la Artois do it? Cer­tain­ly not. But it could hurt none of us, what­ev­er our cre­ative endeav­or of choice, to emu­late his will­ing­ness on dis­play here to learn from his mis­takes (based on his list, I’d say he’s tak­en his share of hard knocks hir­ing cou­ples, adapt­ing nov­els, and work­ing with ani­mals); to share his wis­dom; and (maybe most impor­tant­ly of all) to learn not to take our­selves too seri­ous­ly. Sure, his detrac­tors tend to accuse him of pre­ten­tious­ness, but we true fans (who pay close atten­tion even to his com­mer­cial act­ing gigs) know the truth.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Wim Wen­ders and Cel­e­brat­ed Direc­tors Talk About the Future of Cin­e­ma (1982)

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.