Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes & Sayings

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

Normally, however, I try to avoid repetitions of any shot. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

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

Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

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

A director is a man, therefore he has ideas; he is also an artist, therefore he has imagination. Whether they are good or bad, it seems to me that I have an abundance of stories to tell. And the things I see, the things that happen to me, continually renew the supply. — Michelangelo Antonioni

A man who renounces something is also a man who believes in something. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

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

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

The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development- whether psychological or material- one must pass on to the actual realization. — Michelangelo Antonioni

You cannot penetrate events with reportage. — 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

The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

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

A film that can be described in words is not really a film. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing. — Michelangelo Antonioni

People are always misquoting me. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like. — Michelangelo Antonioni

In Blow-up I used my head instinctively! — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

My work is like digging, it's archaeological research among the arid materials of our times. That's how I understand my first films, and that's what I'm still doing ... — Michelangelo Antonioni

I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about. — Michelangelo Antonioni