Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Real, Film

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  20 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Photography, Art, Creativity

  41 Copy quote

• Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Looks, Emptiness

  26 Copy quote

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

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Film

  36 Copy quote

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

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Taken, Tragedy, Should

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Believe, Thinking, People

  "Interview in Rome". Encountering Directors, (pp. 15-32), 1972.

  34 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Imagine, Mistrust, Show Me

  18 Copy quote

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

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Thinking, Shooting, Want

  "Interview in Rome". Encountering Directors, (pp. 15-32), 1972.

  53 Copy quote

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

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Believe, Men, Renounce

  33 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Blow, Reality, Want

  "Michelangelo Antonioni : The Complete Films" edited by Seymour Chatman and Paul Duncan, (p. 113), 2004.

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Wall, Air, Looks

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  4 Copy quote

• There can be no censorship better than one's own conscience.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Censorship, Conscience

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Stars, Believe, Night

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Running, Hands, Color

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Beautiful, Sex, Attitude

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Art, Ideas, Today

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Men, Space, Use

  "Interview in Rome". Encountering Directors, (pp. 15-32), 1972.

  15 Copy quote

• The script is simply a series of notes for the film.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Scripts, Film, Notes

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  10 Copy quote

• After you've learned two or three basic rules of cinema grammar, you can do what you like - including breaking those rules.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Two, Three, Cinema

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  9 Copy quote

• A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Scene, Structure, Rhythm

  "Interview in Rome". Encountering Directors, (pp. 15-32), 1972.

  29 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Desire, Done, Half

  "Autobiographical interview". Cahiers du Cinema Magazine, 1960.

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Interesting, Diaries, Goes On

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  4 Copy quote

• If an actor tries to understand too much, he will act in an intellectual and unnatural manner.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Intellectual, Trying, Actors

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  11 Copy quote

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

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Love Is, Giving, Definitions

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  11 Copy quote

• It's obvious that I must explain what I want from an actor, but I don't want to discuss everything I ask him to do, because often my requests are completely instinctive and there are things I can't explain. It's like painting: You don't know why you use pink instead of blue. You simply feel that's how it should be - pink. Then the phone rings and you answer it. When you come back, you don't want pink anymore and you use blue - without knowing why. You can't help it; that's just the way it is.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Phones, Blue, Knowing

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

  14 Copy quote

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