Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes

I want an actor to try to give me what I ask in the best and most exact way possible. He mustn't try to find out more, because then there's the danger that he'll become his own director.

I've always dreamed of getting to know the women of other countries better. When I was a boy, I remember, I used to get angry at the thought that I did not know German or American or Swedish women.

I'm not rich and maybe I'll never be rich. Money is useful - yes - but I don't worship it.

I never think in terms of alienation; it's the others who do. Alienation means one thing to Hegel, another to Marx and yet another to Freud; so it is not possible to give a single definition, one that will exhaust the subject. It is a question bordering on philosophy, and I'm not a philosopher nor a sociologist. My business is to tell stories, to narrate with images - nothing else. If I do make films about alienation - to use that word that is so ambiguous - they are about characters, not about me.

Reality has a quality of freedom about it that is hard to explain.

Take Einstein; wasn't he looking for something stable and changeless in this enormous, constantly changing melting pot that is the universe? He sought fixed rules. Today, instead, it would be helpful to find all those rules that show how and why the universe is not fixed - how this dynamism develops and acts. Then maybe we will be able to explain many things, perhaps even art, because the old instruments of judgment, the old aesthetics, are no longer of any use to us - so much so that we no longer know what's beautiful and what isn't.

Monica Vitti is astonishingly mobile. Few actresses have such mobile features. She has her own personal and original way of acting.

A film that can be described in words is not really a film.

The script is a starting point, not a fixed highway. I must look through the camera to see if what I've written on the page is right or not. In the script, you describe imagined scenes, but it's all suspended in mid-air. Often, an actor viewed against a wall or a landscape, or seen through a window, is much more eloquent than the lines you've given him. So then you take out the lines. This happens often to me and I end up saying what I want with a movement or a gesture.

Fitzgerald said a very interesting thing in his diary; that human life proceeds from the good to the less good - that is, it's always worse as you go on. That's true.

The women I like, no matter what nationality, all seem to have more or less the same qualities. Perhaps this is because one goes looking for them - that is, you like that type of woman and then look for her.

Method actors are absolutely terrible. They want to direct themselves, and it's a disaster.

The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development- whether psychological or material- one must pass on to the actual realization.

It's only human and natural that an actor should see the film in terms of his own part, but I, as a director, have to see the film as a whole. He must therefore collaborate selflessly, totally.

My work is like digging, it's archaeological research among the arid materials of our times. That's how I understand my first films, and that's what I'm still doing...

Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.

We know that behind every image revealed there is another image more faithful to reality, and in the back of that image there is another, and yet another behind the last one, and so on, up to the true image of that absolute, mysterious reality that no one will ever see.

One of the problems of the future world will be the use of leisure time. How will it be filled up? Maybe drugs will be distributed free of charge by the government.

I simply know what the actor's attitude should be and what he should say. He doesn't, because he can't see the relationship that begins to exist between his body and the other things in the scene.

Another reason for switching to color is world television. In a few years, it will all be in color, and you can't compete against that with black-and-white films.

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.

People are always misquoting me.

The struggle for life is not only the material and economic one. Comfort is no protection from anxiety.

When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film.

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.

There are many ways of communicating. Some hold the theory that new forms of communication between people can be obtained through hallucinogenic drugs.

When I see a good film, it's like a whiplash. I run away, in order not to be influenced. Thus, the films I liked most are those I think least about.

A particular type of film emerged from World War Two, with the Italian neorealist school. It was perfectly right for its time, which was as exceptional as the reality around us. Our major interest focused on that and on how we could relate to it. Later, when the situation normalized and post-war life returned to what it had been in peacetime, it became important to see the intimate, interior consequences of all that had happened.

I've made films about the middle classes because I know them best. Everyone talks about what he knows best.

You cannot penetrate events with reportage.

I can't give any absolute definition of what love is, or even whether it ought to exist.

I don't know whether I am ever bored. I never look at myself.

I'll go on making films until I make one that pleases me from the first to the last frame. Then I'll quit.

A man who renounces something is also a man who believes in something.

All I know is that we are loaded down with old and stale stuff - habits, customs, old attitudes already dead and gone.

Life should be taken ironically; otherwise, it becomes a tragedy.

The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying.

Sometimes actors' mistakes give me ideas I can use, because mistakes are always sincere, absolutely sincere.

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.

When you work on a character, you form in your mind an image of what he ought to look like. Then you go and find one who resembles him.

Favourite directors change, like favorite authors. I had a passion for Gide and Stein and Faulkner. But now they're no use to me anymore. I've assimilated them - so, enough, they are a closed chapter. This also applies to film directors.

Reality itself is steadily becoming more colored. Think of what factories were like, especially in Italy at the beginning of the 19th century, when industrialization was just beginning: gray, brown and smoky. Color didn't exist. Today, instead, most everything is colored. The pipe running from the basement to the 12th floor is green because it carries steam. The one carrying electricity is red, and that with water is purple. Also, plastic colors have filled our homes, even revolutionized our taste. Pop art grew out of that and was possible because of this change in taste.

Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance.

A woman's sex appeal is an inner matter. It stems from her mental make-up, basically. It's an attitude, not just a question of her physical features - that arrogant quality in a woman's femininity. Otherwise, all beautiful women would have sex appeal, which is not so.

I've never had a method of working. I change according to circumstances; I don't employ any particular technique or style. I make films instinctively, more with my belly than with my brain.

I've always played down the drama in my films. In my main scenes, there's never an opportunity for an actor to let go of everything he's got inside. I always try to tone down the acting, because my stories demand it, to the point where I might change a script so that an actor has no opportunity to come out well.

The way I relax, what I like doing most, is watching. That's why I like traveling, to have new things before my eyes - even a new face. I enjoy myself like that and can stay for hours, looking at things, people, scenery.

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.