Michelangelo Antonioni
I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.Collection: Space
Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.
A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.
I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.
You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.
When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them.
When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.
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.
We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean.
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.
Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer.
Normally, however, I try to avoid repetitions of any shot.
In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!
I don't want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.
I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.
I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.
But, you know, Cronaca isn't more innovative than what comes after.
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.
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.Collection: Photography
A film you can explain in words is not a real film.Collection: Real
A film that can be described in words is not really a film.Collection: Film
Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.Collection: Looks
Life should be taken ironically; otherwise, it becomes a tragedy.Collection: Taken
I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why.Collection: Believe
A man who renounces something is also a man who believes in something.Collection: Believe
I always mistrust everything I see, which an image shows me, because I imagine what is beyond it. And what is beyond an image cannot be known.Collection: Imagine
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.Collection: Wall
The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.Collection: Blow
There can be no censorship better than one's own conscience.Collection: Censorship
Today we no longer know what to call art, what its function is and even less what function it will have in the future. We know only that it is something dynamic - unlike many ideas that have governed us.Collection: Art
I read somewhere that happiness is like the bluebird of Maeterlinck: Try to catch it and it loses its color. It's like trying to hold water in your hands. The more you squeeze it, the more the water runs away.Collection: Running
When I see nature, when I look into the sky, the dawn, the sun, the colors of insects, snow crystals, the night stars, I don't feel a need for God. Perhaps when I can no longer look and wonder, when I believe in nothing - then, perhaps, I might need something else. But I don't know what.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Interesting
The script is simply a series of notes for the film.Collection: Scripts
After you've learned two or three basic rules of cinema grammar, you can do what you like - including breaking those rules.Collection: Two
I can't give any absolute definition of what love is, or even whether it ought to exist.Collection: Love Is
I rarely feel the desire to reread a scene the day before the shooting. Sometimes I arrive at the place where the work is to be done and I do not even know what I am going to shoot. This is the system I prefer: to arrive at the moment when shooting is about to begin, absolutely unprepared, virgin. I often ask to be left alone on the spot for fifteen minutes or half an hour and I let my thoughts wander freely.Collection: Desire
Do you really think a man must be strong, masculine, dominating, and the woman frail, obedient and sensitive? This is a conventional idea. Reality is quite different.Collection: Strong
If an actor tries to understand too much, he will act in an intellectual and unnatural manner.Collection: Intellectual
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.Collection: Character
I don't know whether I am ever bored. I never look at myself.Collection: Bored
I believe in the autobiographical concept only to the degree that I am able to put onto film all that's passing through my head at the moment of shooting.Collection: Believe
In any case, the idea of giving "all" of reality is overly simple and absurd.Collection: Simple
I'm more or less skeptical about marriage, because of family ties, relations between children and parents - it's all so depressing.Collection: Depressing
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.Collection: Letting Go
You can't go to an LSD or pot party unless you take it yourself. If I want to go, I must take drugs myself.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Quality
I'll go on making films until I make one that pleases me from the first to the last frame. Then I'll quit.Collection: Please Me
There are many ways of communicating. Some hold the theory that new forms of communication between people can be obtained through hallucinogenic drugs.Collection: Communication