Peter Greenaway Quotes About Film

Quotes about: Film

• I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.

  Peter Greenaway

  Arrogant, Film

• On the other hand, I view the whole matter from a cosmic perspective. I don't take a position. I believe that there are no more positions to take, no certainties, no facts. Many people find this confusing about my films; they say I am hiding out behind irony. But from a cosmic viewpoint, it is eternally unimportant whether one lives or not.

  Peter Greenaway

  Believe, Views, Hands

  Peter Greenaway, Vernon W. Gras (2000). “Peter Greenaway: Interviews”, p.64, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• It seems to me that dominant cinema seems to require an empathy or a sympathy between the film and the audience which is basically to do with the manipulation of the emotions and it seems to me again -- and this is a very subjective position -- that most cinema seems to trivialise the emotions, sentimentalising or romanticising them.

  Peter Greenaway

  Empathy, Cinema, Manipulation

• Eisenstein was a good editor. I was trained as a film editor, and I've no doubt that the editor is key to a film.

  Peter Greenaway

  Keys, Editors, Doubt

  "'You have naked bodies and genitalia, don't you? Why are you so adolescent?': Director Peter Greenaway on 'Puritan' Americans and the intense sex scenes in 'Eisenstein in Guanajuato'". Interview with Gary M. Kramer, www.salon.com. February 4, 2016.

• I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realising all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film.

  Peter Greenaway

  Intelligent, Understanding, Want

• That comes from most people having an American film model in their heads which is nothing but a total illusionary masturbatory massage.

  Peter Greenaway

  People, Massage, Film

  Peter Greenaway, Vernon W. Gras (2000). “Peter Greenaway: Interviews”, p.61, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I think my films are very English. That certain emotional distance, interest in the world, interest in irony. These are all deeply English propositions.

  Peter Greenaway

  Distance, Emotional, Thinking

• There have been innumerable films about film-making, but Otto e Mezzo was a film about the processes of thinking about making a film -- certainly the most enjoyable part of any cinema creation.

  Peter Greenaway

  Thinking, Cinema, Film

  Peter Greenaway (1999). “Eight and a half women”, Dis Voir Editions

• I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it.

  Peter Greenaway

  Art, Thinking, Space

  Interview in Art and Design, no. 49,

• I think it is really important to be in some way provocative -- either intellectually or viscerally -- in the films one makes.

  Peter Greenaway

  Thinking, Important, Way

• We have to move away from the concept of screening in cinemas. This can be achieved with the new technologies. I enjoy my films and the fact that I can include you in them as well. Cinema is only a small part of a much greater phenomenon. We transcend the barriers of culture. DVDs' image quality and longevity provide us with new prospects. They are a powerful medium. I think they were invented especially for me.

  Peter Greenaway

  Powerful, Moving, Technology

• I don't want to be a film-maker. I think painting is far more exciting and profound. It's always at the back of my mind - let's give up this silly business of film-making and concentrate on something more satisfying and worthwhile.

  Peter Greenaway

  Thinking, Profound, Want

  "I plan to kill myself when I'm 80". Interview with Xan Brooks, www.theguardian.com. November 15, 2012.

• My audience is comprised of three categories. The first category contains the people who decide after the first five minutes that they've made a mistake and leave. The second category is the people who give the film a chance and leave annoyed after 40 minutes. The third category includes the people that watch the whole film and return to see it again. If I'm able to persuade 33% of the audience to stay, then I can say that I've succeeded.

  Peter Greenaway

  Mistake, People, Giving

• An American critic wrote that she would rather be forced to read the New York telephone directory three times than watch the film A Zed and Two Noughts, a third of which was a homage to Vermeer. Conceivably, if you are a list-enthusiast like me, the New York telephone directory might be fascinating, demographically, geographically, historically, typographically, cartographically; but I am sure no compliment was intended.

  Peter Greenaway

  New York, Two, Vermeer

• I think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question 'why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose?

  Peter Greenaway

  Thinking, Self, Doe

  "Maybe I'm too clever". Interview With Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. May 10, 2004.

• The start of a film is like a gateway, a formal entrance-point. The first three minutes of a film make great demands on an audience's patience and credulity. A great deal has to be learnt very rapidly about place and attitude, character and intent and ambition.

  Peter Greenaway

  Attitude, Ambition, Character

  "Watching Water". Catalogue of the Exhibition in Venice, Palazzo Fortuny, 1993.

• Many quite popular films are filled with violence. I think the difference between those and my films is that I show the cause and effect of violent activity. It's not a Donald Duck situation where he get a brick in the back of the head and gets up and walks away in the next frame. Mine have violence which keeps Donald Duck in the hospital for six months and creates a trauma which he will remember for the rest of his life.

  Peter Greenaway

  Thinking, Ducks, Differences

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• In practically every film you experience, you can see the director following the text. Illustrating the words first, making the pictures after, and, alas, so often not making pictures at all, but holding up the camera to do its mimetic worst.

  Peter Greenaway

  Cameras, Directors, Firsts

  Zoetrope All-Story, Volume 5, No. 1., Spring 2001.

• There is no obligation for the author of a film to believe in, or to sympathise with, the moral behaviour of his characters. Nor is he necessarily to be accredited with the same opinions as his characters. Nor is it necessary or obligatory for him to believe in the tenet of his construction - all of which is a disclaimer to the notion that the author of Drowning by Numbers believes that all men are weak, enfeebled, loutish, boorish and generally inadequate and incompetent as partners for women. But it's a thought.

  Peter Greenaway

  Believe, Character, Men

  "Fear Of Drowning By Numbers". Book by Peter Greenaway, 1991.

• My favourite film-maker west of the English Channel is not English - but to me doesn't seem American either - David Lynch - a curious American-European film-maker. He has - against odds - achieved what we want to achieve here. He takes great risks with a strong personal voice and adequate funds and space to exercise it. I thought Blue Velvet was a masterpiece.

  Peter Greenaway

  Strong, Exercise, Odds

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• I made a very bad mistake; I miscounted these scraps of information on the record as 92, and in continual homage to this man who had been so influential to me, I began creating or constructing my own films on this so-called "magic" number of 92 ... but when I eventually made a film about John Cage and met him, I explained this to him, and he found it very amusing because there are only 90 stories on the two sides of the record, and I'd based three years of my filmic career on this mathematical error!

  Peter Greenaway

  Mistake, Men, Years

  Interview in Art and Design, no. 49,

• There is visual illiteracy with text-oriented films like bloody 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings.'.

  Peter Greenaway

  Potters, Film, Lord

  "'You have naked bodies and genitalia, don't you? Why are you so adolescent?': Director Peter Greenaway on 'Puritan' Americans and the intense sex scenes in 'Eisenstein in Guanajuato'". Interview with Gary M. Kramer, www.salon.com. February 4, 2016.

• Film is such an extraordinary rich medium which can handle so many different modes of operation, combining together in the same place all these extraordinary disciplines which may be executed in their own right - music, writing, picture making of all kinds, and I often feel that some filmmakers make films with one eye closed and two hands tied behind their backs.

  Peter Greenaway

  Writing, Eye, Hands

  Interview in Art and Design, no. 49,

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