Bernardo Bertolucci Quotes

I think that what I learned then, I didn't know I was learning. I just knew that I was very privileged to see somebody who was a writer, a great poet, and very smart-faced. Suddenly Pasolini becomes a director, so he has to invent cinema. It was like watching the invention of cinema. But I found out that Pasolini taught me a lot. It was, especially, the kind of respect that he had for reality. He had kind of epiphanies in his movies, like when a moment becomes full of grace, and it is like as if it was the most important moment in the life of a character.

I remember being young in the 1960s. We had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.

You know, in ten years you're gonna be playing soccer with your tits, what do you think of that?

I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those.

I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important.

If New York is the Big Apple, tonight Hollywood is the Big Nipple.

Every film I have made has corresponded to a very special moment of my life. I like to think that if someone wanted to reconstruct the story of my life, they can just see my movies and know what I have been through.

Pornography is not in the hands of the child who discovers his sexuality by masturbating, but in the heart of the adult who slaps him.

A name? Oh, Jesus Christ. Ah, God, I've been called by a million names all my life. I don't want a name. I'm better off with a grunt or a groan for a name.

There's no more film; now everything's digital. I welcome this. It's fantastic for me to have a new chance.

I am in love with the idea of doing a movie in 3D. I think 3D would be great for the story I want to do, in a realistic, normal story, using 3D on the emotions in a kind of intimate story.

The movies I like are always movies where cinema is reinvented like if it was the beginning of cinema.

The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life. But Hollywood has forgotten that, in the past, what made Hollywood great and what made it go ahead was the fact that Hollywood was fed with, for example, Jewish directors coming from Germany or Austria and enriching Hollywood. In 15, 20 years, Hollywood became imperialistic. Cinema goes ahead when it is marriaged by other culture. Otherwise, it turns on itself.

To explore technology for me is something that I have to do. Otherwise, I feel completely left in the back... abandoned.

I like that 3D is based on the fact that you look with two eyes, so two cameras imitate that.

This is something that I dream about: to live films, to arrive at the point at which one can live for films, can think cinematographically, eat cinematographically, sleep cinematographically, as a poet, a painter, lives, eats, sleeps painting.

Film students should stay as far away from film schools and film teachers as possible. The only school for the cinema is the cinema.

Sometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late.

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.

Having no children had been a kind of choice up to the moment when, from a choice, it became a sadness.

What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution. I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. 'The Dreamers' was a total homage to cinema and that love for it.

I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.

What I was talking about was, of course, very autobiographical - '68 was the moment when all the young people were incredibly excited, because when we were going to sleep, we knew we would wake up not tomorrow, but in the future. There was a sense of future that was the result of the mixture of politics, cinema, music, the first joints. And the movies were a very important part of that cocktail.

I'm no longer interested in making political films. There's something old-fashioned about them. Young people now don't care for politics. It isn't present in life as it used to be. And increasingly I like films which reflect present-day reality.

I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks.

If you mention any ideological thing about shooting Last Tango in Paris, I was thinking I was doing a political film.

You live day by day. You can't build your life.

The life before '68 was very different from the life after '68. Before '68, our days were full of authoritarian moments. There were authorities everywhere. In fact, the movement of '68 was young people against their authorities, children against their parents. And that remained. The most important thing of all, the thing that lasted, was the first feminist movement and the position of women in society. That completely changed and that was very, very important.

English dialogues are always just what you need and nothing more - like something out of Hemingway. In Italian and in French, dialogues are always theatrical, literary. You can do more with it.

After many, many years, I fell out of love with politics. It's not something I like but it's the truth.

I accept all interpretations of my films. The only reality is before the camera. Each film I make is kind of a return to poetry for me, or at least an attempt to create a poem.

I was writing poems when I was young, you know, because my father was a poet, so it was absolutely normal to follow my father.

I was seduced by the nouvelle vague, because it was really reinventing everything. And the Italian cinema that one would see in the theaters in the late '50s, early '60s was Italian comedy, Italian style, which, to me, was like the end of neo-realism. I think cinema all over the world was influenced by it, which was Italy finding its freedom at the end of fascism, the end of the Nazi invasion. It was a kind of incredible energy. Then, late '50s, early '60s, the neo-realism lost its great energy and became comedy.

I think that I used to love Hollywood movies. I remember great phases and moments. But, unfortunately, now is not the moment.

As a loyal believer in the Auteur Theory I first felt editing was but the logical consequence of the way in which one shoots. But, what I learned is that it is actually another writing.

I haven't made a movie for a while, but I've watched a lot. It's my major waste of time. I like to work, but also to be waiting for work.

Sometimes I think that I understand my movies after I make them. Really. I go very often off of instinct.

I don't see my movies. I think it's healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I'm afraid to be disappointed.

Commuting in a wheelchair is not easy. I live in a very old part of Rome. These cobbles everywhere... terrible! In London, it is the same. Every pavement is uneven.

A dolly move is a moral commitment.

I like to be in a huis clos, as the French say - in one place. It's something that in general can create a bit of claustrophobia. But for me, claustrophobia becomes almost immediately claustrophilia. I love it!

I think that Hollywood should also be influenced by directors from Hong Kong. You see how Quentin Tarantino is really the example of how you can develop, and how you can go ahead if you accept the existence of different cinematic cultures. There you have Quentin playing with kung-fu. That's why the independents are the most interesting.

New York has always embraced me.