Wim Wenders' 1987 conversation with Alain Bergala

A. B. Do you have the same sense of preserving things by looking at them (re-garder) when you shoot a film take?

W. W. I think that films narrate history. Films especially.
All films are ultimately documentaries, because in passing, unintentionally, they record the clouds crossing the sky or a flock of birds somewhere in the background or someone walking by who doesn't notice he's being filmed. Or else animals: I'm always very affected when I see animals in a film. They are simply there, even more innocent than children, and they have no idea whatsoever that there are such things as cameras. But if you're making a film and you shoot the same scene ten times, the fact that the clouds cross the sky ten times devalues every one of those takes seen for itself just as much as the fact that it's been endlessly rehearsed does, or that it can be cut at any point during the editing. If you film landscape, the shots very often aren't in the final film and the negative will be destroyed. So film making is not as definitive an act as photography.

A. B. There are directors, such as Rohmer in some of his films, who take this idea to its logical conclusion. If every shot is unique, and if, given the sacrosanct value of each moment in the filming, there can be no progression from one take to another, then the response is to shoot any given take only once.

WW. I know. That impresses me greatly. I think Kurosawa films like that too. The editing and selection process really are pretty cruel: It's very unjust to take 200 hours of film material that record people, landscapes, the sky, animals or objects, and throw out 198 in order to keep two.