| # | Quote |
|---|
| 1 | [on Robert Ryan] Robert Ryan! The minute I met that guy, this huge man, part of the history of the cinema, I man I had seen on the screen when I was a kid, I must tell you... |
| 2 | My characters are carried by a passion that brings them beyond the limits. This is exactly the way I picture being a director. That's why I've never matched with the system because I'm so intense when I do a picture, I'm so dedicated, that slowly the people surrounding me become enemies - I see that they don't believe, they have no faith. They try to reduce everything to some kind of a standard. They try to understand everything. But you do not explain what faith is. Either you believe or you don't. I'm a believer. |
| 3 | [on IP5: L'île aux pachydermes (1992)] I really love that film. It's probably my favourite film. It is a road movie but I twisted the genre as I do with my other films - it is supposedly a road movie but it is, in fact, a quest for real and truthful love. Yves Montand was the easiest actor I ever worked with, and this was after I had the experience of working with Gérard Depardieu, who was the most difficult. But let's be clear: Depardieu was difficult because he was drinking at the time. Otherwise he's a charming man and a great actor. He knows the camera like no other actor working today. I operate my own camera, so I know when an actor is at ease with the camera and understands it. Gerard is unbelievable. I didn't find this again until I worked with Yves Montand. I knew that Yves Montand was in a stage of his career where he was looking to take risks. Few stars are capable of that. This was a man who epitomized the glamorous French lover in his heyday, and this was, for the most part, such a deglamorized part, except when he wore that tuxedo during the wedding scene, he was the Montand we know. Once we started shooting, he relaxed into it, and it was the most delightful experience. I've never had an actor work harder for me than Yves did, and he was 72 years old at the time. He died two days after we did some reshoots, of the scene where he dies, ironically. The press made a connection between his death and the film, almost implying that the film had killed him, so it had bad press literally almost before it was finished. Yves wasn't there to defend me, or the film, so it was very tough. It's important to know the difference between reality and fiction. When the two get confused, you have a problem. One final story about Yves: most people referred to him as "Montand", that's how they addressed him. I called him "Yves" from the beginning right to the end of the shoot. I don't know why he allowed me to do this, but I always felt sort of honoured by it. |
| 4 | [on Betty Blue (1986)] This movie came like a fairy tale, like a comet from the skies. I was sent this novel by Philippe Djian, still in gallies. It hadn't yet been published. I read the book and loved it. From the very beginning, I was in love with the characters and the story. A lot of people asked me, "How can you make a picture out of that?" And I said, "How can I not?" I thought it was funny. There were great lines, which were literature, because Philippe Djian is an author. But this literature I knew I could put into dialogue, and from time to time I allowed myself to add some dialogue and some other original ideas. It was the easiest movie I've ever made. What appealed to the audience worldwide was the fact that a love story has to be big and this was a big love story. At the same time, it was very casual. These were two people who aren't rich or ride fancy cars or live in fancy apartments. Their lives and the experience of their love brought them to a state of happiness and excitement that everyone would like to experience. I think it was also the fact that the film was situated nowhere. It was France but it could have been many places - it didn't look so French. I think another reason as to why it was so successful was because of the extraordinary performances of Jean-Hugues Anglade and Beatrice Dalle. Betty is an image of youth. She is what young people are. They need movement. They needed changes. They need the world to change. She is expecting something big. When she sees the world doesn't match her expectations, I think she turns against herself. She is an allegory of what young people are. You have to give them something - not only to sell them clothes and junk food - but ideas that help them move the world. My rough cut of Betty Blue was four hours long. I had been so traumatised by the experience of The Moon in the Gutter, which I'd recut, and recut, I just decided to play it safe and cut it down to a "reasonable" length, which would serve the action, that would make the distributors happy and allow them to have one or two extra showings per day. But I'm very happy with the three-hour cut of Betty Blue that you see on DVD. I think it's much better. |
| 5 | [on The Moon in the Gutter (1983)] For every dollar I am given, I try to give back two, but I cannot turn stones into gold, so I needed money to make this movie, and I didn't think it was ugly to spend money to make this film because it works in its way. It works only in its way. And I was encouraged because of Diva (1981). Probably it was a movie where I lost my perspective of what the limits were. I was sincerely trying to do something. I went very far. I thought I had wings. I was nuts! But it is a state of madness to which you fall prey only once in your life. You cannot stay there. It's just impossible. But I was crazy during this movie. I was flying. I was in love with this film. In fact, what you saw is the short version - there is a four-hour cut. Nevertheless, I was badly bashed in Cannes. It was very, very violent. It's like you have been in a plane crash and survived. You will never, ever be the same. |
| 6 | As a kid I was watching films and enjoying them very much. It was a dream filled with people that I wanted to look like, adventures etc. When I was 18, I pushed on the door of the Cinematheque and then started the education. I started to learn that films were made by people and that there was a history - there were directors and themes and trends. Slowly, I was taken by this and it was almost beyond my will. I resisted and tried to go in the opposite direction by going into medicine. I spent three years in medical school but after three years it was obvious I had to move into this job. |
| 7 | I had my first camera at the age of 14 and was taking lots of pictures. Then I got a movie camera and was always filming, and it was usually very bad, because I didn't know what to film, and still don't. So now I take pictures with my iPhone every day. I have over a thousand pictures in this phone. Sometimes it provides me with my fix. It's sort of like my dope, my painkiller. I take pictures. I know that the picture is the beginning of a film. |
| 8 | [on The Moon in the Gutter (1983)] I had wanted to go much further with that film in terms of stylistics and playing with the medium. I thought I was doing something great. I filmed on a huge stage in Cinecittà between the sets of Sergio Leone, doing Once Upon a Time in America (1984), and Federico Fellini, who was shooting And the Ship Sails On (1983). Now, it's gotten a bit of recognition, which is better late than never, I suppose. But I went from feeling like a failure for an entire year with Diva (1981), my first film, thinking it would be my last. Suddenly, it's a success in America, and I'm a major director. Then I do The Moon in the Gutter, I have money, ambitions and stars. I shoot it in the most magical studio in the world. All of this is very heavy and was like this wonderful dream, where I was flying on the wings of victory. And then, bang, bang, bang: I'm shot down. It was very scary. After I did the director's cut of Betty Blue, I approached Gaumont and said that I'd like to do the same thing with The Moon in the Gutter, because I thought I could improve the movie. They said no, because they'd destroyed everything: all the doubles, the negatives, all the footage that was excised from the final cut, is now gone. That was the worst thing in my career that has happened. It enrages me sometimes when I think about it. |
| 9 | When Diva (1981) was first released, it was a flop. The critics didn't like the film at all and they bashed it. Specifically the critics of the New Wave. France is the worst place to be, for a French director. Critically, it was destroyed. They said there was too much style and no substance, which is not true at all, because it says lots of things. It talks about piracy and reproduction. The whole movie is about duplication and a world that is not just anymore a world of physical reality, but a world of display windows, a world of publicity, a world of communication. So anyway, it took a whole year for Diva to escape from this situation of total oblivion, and it was in America that it was discovered. I had to fight the producer to bring the film to Toronto. I had wanted to bring the film to America first, but the two phrases I kept hearing were "How can we sell this in America?" and "Will this please an American audience?" The answer came from the audience in Toronto: they gave it a standing ovation! I had just landed, totally jet-lagged, and I walk into the theatre and everyone is standing up and clapping. I thought I was in a dream, or a nightmare. |
| 10 | [on Stanley Kubrick] I have total admiration for him. I know his films by heart. He's not at all how he's usually described, but unique because of his mastery of cinema vocabulary. I think he was one of the greatest masters of cinema. He succeeded in having an extraordinary vision of directing actors, using colour, music, almost like a choreographer. In the meantime, his films are brilliant metaphors that do not age. |
| 11 | Diva (1981) is a movie about technology, and technology versus artists. If I had to keep one phrase from the film, it's when the Diva says, "It is up to business to adapt to art, and not to art to adapt to business. I know it's very naive but I still believe in it. |
| 12 | I'm an anxious person in an anxious world. |
| 13 | I came up the hard way; I was a gopher for Jacques Becker and René Clément, an assistant director to Claude Berri and Claude Zidi. I was never the kind of cinephile who belonged to any club. I didn't get down on my knees at the Cahiers du Cinéma altar. |
| 14 | In documentaries, the dramaturgy is fulfilled and produced by reality. In fiction, you have the right to alter, to modify, to transform reality into something else, to give it the shape and form you want to give it. This is a very old debate in art history. A lot of people want art to serve the cause of reality. That was the basement of the nouvelle vague. But I think that some artists want to show things with their own eyes. I have never, ever made one picture which is reality. It is always something else - bigger, more baroque. |
| 15 | I think France is a very strange country. There is great intelligence there yet narrowness at the same time. Yet I could say that no one profits in his own country. In France there are some American directors not recognized in America. Or if you say 'Peter Greenaway' or 'Alan Parker' in England it's the same - they'll smash you. You have to understand that I have two films on the Variety list of the best foreign films of the last twenty years. In America, Diva (1981) is taught in the university. In France they're told not to like it. |
| 16 | Films are the expression of what you are, what you feel and what your feelings are about the world. |
$400,000
