Ingmar Bergman
"Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls."
◄ IMDb Polls
Poll: When 20 legendary directors talk about film-making ...
These distinguished directors were not just men of talent, but of unique artistic visions, they all had their own style and never tried to imitate another and their influence on the field of film-making is undeniable. Now, which approach to film-making matches your opinion the most, as an avid film-lover or -who knows?- an aspiring film-maker yourself? (who would you most agree with, said differently?)
Make Your Choice
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Alfred Hitchcock
"Drama is life with the dull bits left out." -
Akira Kurosawa
"With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can't possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. The script must be something that has the power to do this." -
John Cassavetes
"Everything is for sale. Emotions are sold. Sex is sold. Everything is sex. Cars, women, clothes, your face, your hands, your shoes! Look at the ads, at television. My emotions aren't for sale. My thoughts can't be bought. They're mine. I don't want movies that sell me something. I don't want to be told how to feel." -
Charles Chaplin
"I don't believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career" -
Stanley Kubrick
"The essence of dramatic form is to let an idea come over people without it being plainly stated. When you say something directly, it's simply not as potent as it is when you allow people to discover it for themselves" -
Federico Fellini
"Our dreams are our real life. My fantasies and obsessions are not only my reality, but the stuff of which my films are made." -
John Ford
"There are commercial rules that it is necessary to obey. In our profession, an artistic failure is nothing; a commercial failure is a sentence. The secret is to make films that please the public and also allow the director to reveal his personality." -
D.W. Griffith
"A film without a message is just a waste of time." -
Orson Welles
"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." -
John Huston
"The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it." -
François Truffaut
"I make films that I would like to have seen when I was a young man." -
Frank Capra
"My advice to young filmmakers is this: Don't follow trends. Start them!" -
Luis Buñuel
(when asked on why he made movies) "To show that this is not the best of all possible worlds." -
Sidney Lumet
"While the goal of all movies is to entertain, the kind of film is which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and sets the mental juices flowing." -
Billy Wilder
"I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut." -
William Wyler
"It's 80% script and 20% you get great actors. There's nothing else to it." -
David Lean
"Film is a dramatized reality and it is the director's job to make it appear real... an audience should not be conscious of technique." -
Jean Renoir
"A director only makes one film in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again." -
Andrei Tarkovsky
"The director's task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable. Of course an artist can lose his way, but even his mistakes are interesting provided they are sincere. For they represent the reality of his inner life, of the peregrinations and struggle into which the external world has thrown him."
