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.

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.

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.

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

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.

A film you can explain in words is not a real film.

I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about.