The 'Western' is the only genre whose origins are almost identical with those of the cinema itself.

The photographer proceeds, via the intermediary of the lens, to a point where he literally takes a luminous imprint, a cast... [But] the cinema realizes the paradox of moulding itself on the time of the object and of taking the imprint of its duration as well.

Photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness.

Today we can say that at last the director writes the film. The image--its plastic composition and the way it is set in time, because it is founded on a much higher degree of realism--has at its disposal more means of manipulating reality and of modifying it from within. The film-maker is no longer the competitor of the painter and the playwright, he is, at last the equal of the novelist

The 'Western' is the only genre whose origins are almost identical with those of the cinema itself.

Every image is to be seen as an object and every object as an image.

All films are born free and equal.