Quotes About Film

I think the original Matrix was really incredible. It was so original and it did so many innovative things with film. It was a much bigger film. Bound was just a smaller film. It was kind of like an old noir film

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.

"Fish Tank" [my favorite woman-directed film] by Andrea Arnold. The film is so beautifully shot, and I love the raw energy of Katie Jarvis, who plays the main character, Mia. She is not a professional actress and she provides the film with a sense of realism. To me, the film feels so complete and superior.

I guess my first digital movie was 'Tintin' because 'Tintin' has no film step. There is no intermediate film step. It's 100% digital animation, but as far as a live-action film, I'm still planning to shoot everything on film.

I got into film in an odd way - when I was 17 years old I participated in a Swedish film as an actor. I think every person at that age should get a role in a film, because during that time you want acceptance, and when you have a role in a film you become an important person. I think about that now, and that was my fantastic starting point.

I applied [to film school] figuring, "I need to find some structure for myself. I need to find a way to figure out what kind of filmmaker I want to be." And that is what film school provides you with. It'll teach you the basics of how a production works and the technical side of how to put everything together, but you could also learn that by working on film sets.

I would have to say I might do some stuff, but it's the film that's appealing. I was raised on film. My musical experience is all via film, it's not from classical music.

When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script.

I went to film school when I was 17, and of course when you are very young you think that there is nothing else in the world except film. At some point I started getting hungry to see something else. For five years I didn't make any films, I was traveling around the world, writing for newspapers, working in theater, working in opera, I thought I would never return to film.

I waited for each film to become important for me. If I had no ideas for a film, I didn't do a film. So I made not that many films for fifty-four years of working.

The film The Conquest will be seen on many different levels and the American point of view is always more technical. The French are less technical - it's 'I like it, or I don't like it.' I hope that this film can have a life in the U.S. - it's the grand country of cinema. I grew up with Hollywood movies, so for a French director to have a film distributed in the U.S. is a real opportunity.

I think a lot of people go into filmmaking thinking, "How can I make a career?" And so when they make their first film, they make it thinking, "Well, this'll be the one that gets me to the place where I can make the second film the way I want to make it, and that'll get me to the place where I can make $100 million on the third film." And I thought, "Well, if I put sustainability at the bottom of my priority list, then what opportunities is that going to free me up to pursue?" And that's what I've always done.

I get to work with incredibly talented young filmmakers and students, and their attitudes and relationship with film is still so pure. That re-inspires me and reminds me why I got into it and what I love about film, and allows me a little reprieve from the business side of it. And it rekindles my love of film.

My filmmaking style of remixing came out of necessity. When I was a film theory student at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, there were no film production facilities. The only way I learned to tell stories on film was by re-cutting and splicing together celluloid of old movies, early animated films, home films, sound slug - anything I could get my hands on.

Making an independent documentary film is so hard that usually, the usual model is that your film becomes a model for advocacy, so you can enlist that support group and get as much juice out of your film as possible. That's just practically, financially, what you need to do.

At the end of the day, regardless of whether you're doing a huge budget film or a small budget film, you still want the film to do well, and have people see it. That's the whole point. You want to put some kind of message into your films, and you want people to see it.

I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.

I hate to write and spend months just waiting for the film to get financed. Then when you start preparing the film and you shoot it, you've already forgotten why you wanted to make the film in the first place. I like to have some kind of coherent energy that takes you through writing, preparing, shooting.

Before writing a single note of music, and even before the spotting session, I find it best to sit down with the director and just listen to him or her talk about the film - what they're trying to say, what they want the audience to understand or believe, and a thousand other similar questions. The director has most likely been living with the film for years before a composer is attached, and so the director's inclinations, desires, and understanding of the film are paramount.

Plays are literature: the word, the idea. Film is much more like the form in which we dream - in action and images (Television is furniture). I think a great play can only be a play. It fits the stage better than it fits the screen. Some stories insist on being film, can't be contained on stage. In the end, all writing serves to answer the same question: Why are we alive? And the form the question takes - play, film, novel - is dictated, I suppose, by whether its story is driven by character or place.

Perhaps I shall not write my account of the Paleolithic at all, but make a film of it. A silent film at that, in which I shall show you first the great slumbering rocks of the Cambrian period, and move from those to the mountains of Wales...from Ordovician to Devonian, on the lush glowing Cotswolds, on to the white cliffs of Dover... An impressionistic, dreaming film, in which the folded rocks arise and flower and grow and become Salisbury Cathedral and York Minster.

One of the earliest memories I have of feeling the power of film music was watching Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. That was a really clear epiphany for me, when I realized that each film has its own music, and that there was someone out there who wrote this very specific music for just this one film.

The size of a studio film lets you see technology in a way that you wouldn't on an independent film, like the gadgets and the angles and all that.

Everything that goes into making a film, when it's the finished product, us as the actors look at the film and go: "Oh man, OK, on that day we were doing whatever the circumstances were on that day...." So much goes into it and it's all so incredibly calculated that the behind-the-scenes chemistry that exists between all of us is sometimes forgotten - you can't act that. We've all come together and held hands through each of the processes that I've been a part of.

[When accepting the American Film Institute Life Achievement award] I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat (Patricia Hitchcock), and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville.

The reason I live in America is because I mean literally every six or seven years I've done something in England. The last lead I had in an English film I did was 1998. So that's why I live here. It's because I get more work. I'll travel back for radio, you know what I mean. I've just got to consider myself to be living in the middle of the ocean, and that way I have a really nice career, if I'm prepared to do television, radio, theater, and film.

I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films. I didn't make that money necessarily from the film business, but I eventually made a lot of money and that's what I do. Of course, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate, and I'm pretty content with my life.

You can make a film with a phone and a computer if you want, if you have the time. So it's a world that is saturated with films and all kind of stuff, so it's such a blessing to be able to make a film and people care, and even if they say that it's a bad idea, at least they care and they're talking about it.

That's the greatest sin a director can commit; to make a film simply because he wants to make a film.

When I was in Hungary in December I was looking at student films and I could not tell which ones were shot on film and which ones were shot digitally. I think that is because the filmmakers in Europe go to four years of film school and learn the techniques.

I have a great deal of respect for the craft, I don't know how much respect it has for me. But it's a precision process. Doing it on stage would be, I think, terrifying. Doing it on film has its own difficulties, because film is not conducive to spontaneity. You might have a run through and get a few chuckles at eight o'clock in the morning, but you don't keep laughing at the same thing all day long.

I believe you shouldn't force the audience's interpretation of a character or a story. The more you explain things, the less intriguing and imaginable they are for viewers. . . . Film to me, in its essence, in its ultimate nature, is silent. Music and dialogue are there to fill what is lacking in the image. But you should be able to tell the story with moving pictures alone. For my next project, though, I'd like to make the kind of film where the characters blabber all the time.

I regard photography and film simply as new technical means which painters must absolutely make use of, just as from time out of mind they have made use of brush, charcoal and color. It is certain, however, that photography and film must become as evocative for the sensibility as pencil, charcoal and brush. (1927)

At least I know that one film-maker in my career has had the initiative to come to me and thought of me as being capable of doing interesting and complicated work, and so I have a new-found belief that other film-makers will see me in a different way, the way that Patty did.

When you make a documentary film, after many years the only thing you remember is what you put into the film, not what you took out.

The father-son thing, that's a separate thing. This film [Forsaken] was not about that. This was a film about two actors wanting to try and tell a story... and taking advantage of the fact that we looked like a father and son.

The film 'Slumdog Millionaire' portrays the spirit you feel in India. For those who haven't been there, the film says it all.

We all know the power of film; we all know there's almost nothing more powerful than to see people on film that look and talk like you, like we do.

I've gone out of my way to not take baggage with me from film to film.

When you go to a film festival as an audience member, it's so much fun. But when you bring your own film there, you carry so much stress and excitement.

I made a French film called "Merry Christmas" which is a very European film. It's a World War I piece.

There's so many people that are interested in film and especially in terms of the technology side of film, that suddenly the fruits of everybody's labor is really starting to manifest itself all across the planet.

You want the film to be critically successful - you certainly want the film to be financially successful so that you can...well, because that's how movies like this are made, you know, they need to make money. But as a director, you can only make the movie that you want to make.

The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one; that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being.

I don't think his life has been in any way disfigured by the film. The film did disclose some difficult facts.

There's no appreciation for the giants [of jazz]; there's never been a major film on Duke Ellington , never a major film on Louis Armstrong. What they accomplished, we could never accomplish today...What's happening now is lightweight compared to what happened before. If Louis Armstrong was alive today, he'd be a superstar. If Art Tatum was alive today, my god, all the piano players would get on their knees. So that's what's missing today; we've been cut off from our heritage.

Here is something no real celebrity will ever tell you: film acting is not very fun. Doing the same thing over and over again until, in the directors eyes, you get it right does not allow for very much creative freedom... In terms of sheer adrenaline, film has absolutely nothing on theater.

I love theatre - it's where I started - and I've directed a play myself. I'm not sure if I want to direct a film, but certainly, as an actress, I'm always thinking, 'Surely this must be my last film.'