Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes


"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."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: People, Actors, Importance, Now)

"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."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Actors, Film, Space)

"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
(Related: Nature, Man, Meaning, Space, Will, Words)

"When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Film, Want)

"Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Living, Man, Moon)

"In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!"
- Michelangelo Antonioni
"I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Science, Culture)

"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."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Space, Want)

"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."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Society, Feelings, Earth, Man, Prophecy, Saying, Sound, Want)

"I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Time, Now, Practice, Rules)

"I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Future, Will)

"We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Society)

"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."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Being, Difference, Film, Mind, Result)

"Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Being, Hollywood, Nothing, Talking)

"A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
"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."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Conscience, Fighting, Freedom, Problems, Sense, Sin, Trying)

"But, you know, Cronaca isn't more innovative than what comes after."
- Michelangelo Antonioni