French Quotes

So I write melodies - thirty, forty, fifty - then I cast them off until I have just two or three. If only one is needed, I go see the director and ask him to decide.

My father had left behind an old piano. My sister was already going to school, my mother was out working, and I stayed at home alone with my adorable grandmother who understood nothing I said. It was so boring that I stayed at the piano all day long, and that saved my life.

I would listen to something on the radio and try to tap out the melody, then the harmonies.

I have a very strange melodic gift: melodies come to me effortlessly.

Here is how I work: when I think that a film needs to have a principal theme, I search for a melody.

What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing.

This truth must be recognized as a dogma and assume the validity of an axiom in the general understanding of painting.

The realistic value of a work is completely independent of its properties in terms of content.

Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment give it a personality it never had before, and in this way, it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power.

Man needs colour to live; it's just as necessary an element as fire and water.

In this loveless everyday life eroticism is a substitute for love.

You may think it's very presumptuous, but I really hope that my movies are going to turn people into better people.

You can work, shop, do everything from home, and I find this unsettling.

Yes, I am very prolific.

Working with the same people is so much quicker and frees up your energy for other things.

Working with a bunch of actors is like trying to tune each violin.

When I was young, my idea was to become a filmmaker.

What I expect of a movie reviewer is that he should love cinema as much as I do.

No, but it's not because I'm getting older that I'm trying to accelerate. But something very curious is happening: The older I get, the more ideas I'm getting.

My movies are, more or less, very short. I'm terrified of boring an audience.

If a film is very clever and well-written, that's what gives you freedom as a director.

I've always done 20 things at once. It's my way of staying alive, not to keep one dish cooking, but several dishes going. And I'm pretty organized.

I'm not one to dwell on rehearsal or preparation.

I would rather my films be well-known than I be well-known.

I never storyboard. I hate it. I don't understand why so many directors want to make comic strips of their films.

I like films to be complete in their written form.

I like films that are well-written and concise and with not a lot of room for improvisation.

I like cinema. I am very fond of it. But from time to time I feel like having some time on my own.

I can zero in on subtle things because I'm holding the camera.

I am not a fan of westerns particularly.