Quotes & Sayings About Cinema

And then the darkness gives way to white neon. An Art Deco font, burning into the night, announces our arrival at the CINEMA LE CHAMPO. The letters dwarf me. Cinema. Has there ever been a more beautiful word? My heart soars as we pass the colorful film posters and walk through the gleaming glass doors. The lobby is smaller than what I'm used to, and though it's missing the tang of artificially buttered popcorn, there's something in the air I recognize, something both musty and comforting. — Stephanie Perkins

In France, if you have any sort of talent, you'd better keep it here. And if you're going to go abroad, it had better not be America. The old battle - American versus Frog cinema. It's ridiculous. — Jean Reno

Digital has really achieved a certain image quality for capture. There's also the way we view and exhibit films. It really touches all aspects of cinema. — Christopher Kenneally

Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Do you know anything about silent films?"
"Sure," I said. "The first ones were developed in the late nineteenth century and sometimes had live musical accompaniment, though it wasn't until the 1920s that sound became truly incorporated into films, eventually making silent ones obsolete in cinema. — Richelle Mead

The world of the cinema and of painting are very different; precisely, the possibilities of photography and the cinema reside in that unlimited fantasy which is born of things themselves ... a piece of sugar can become on the screen larger than an infinite perspective of gigantic buildings. — Salvador Dali

In the dance, one finds the cinema, the comic strips, the Olympic hundred meters and swimming, and what's more, poetry, love and tenderness. — Maurice Bejart

The most important thing in human relationship is conversation.but people don't talk anymore,they don't sit down to talk and listen.They go to theatre,the cinema,watch television,listen to the radio,read books but they almost never talk.(pg114) — Paulo Coelho

I work in between the cracks, where the voice starts dancing, where the body starts singing, where theater becomes cinema. — Meredith Monk

My parents were huge fans of westerns, European cinema, and horror in particular. They wouldn't just show me kids' films. — Hideo Kojima

For any movement to emerge, it has to be innovatively independent from the mainstream cinema, and I don't see that much. — Haile Gerima

Cinema has become a global economy, totally international. — Lasse Hallstrom

'Independent' means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director's voice is extremely present. It's such a pretentious term, but it's auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist ... Whatever word you want. — Alexander Payne

I never got in this business, in cinema, to make horror movies. They arrived on my doorstep and I got typecast. Which was fine, I enjoy it, but I got into this business to make westerns. And the kind of westerns I used to see, they died. So that didn't work out. — John Carpenter

I think starting a cinema career late in life has more advantages than disadvantages. — Luke Evans

What works in a story is very different than what works in cinema. For example, dialogue in books: If you translate it too faithfully, it sounds a little stilted, because we often don't speak the way we speak in novels. Oral language is much punchier, shorter sentences. — Yann Martel

I would personally not run down any cinema just because I am not capable of making it. Anurag Kashyap makes a certain kind of cinema; I make a different kind. But when we meet, we are friendly. — Rohit Shetty

When was the last time you looked at anything, solely, and concentratedly, and for its own sake? Ordinary life passes in a near blur. If we go to the theatre or the cinema, the images before us change constantly, and there is the distraction of language. Our loved ones are so well known to us that there is no need to look at them, and one of the gentle jokes of married life is that we do not. — Jeanette Winterson

If you say one gets influenced watching a character, I think it's foolish. Cinema reflects society; society rarely reflects cinema. — Kajol

Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith. — Spike Lee

It used to hurt when people ran down my films. I used to feel inferior. I wouldn't go to parties or award functions because my cinema is not considered good enough. But now I keep my head high, and I am proud of what I am doing. — Rohit Shetty

How speak about an art which no one recognizes as an art? I know that a great deal has already been written about the "art of the cinema". One can read about it most every day in the newspapers & the magazines. But it is not the art of the cinema which you will find discussed therein
it is rather dire, botched embryo as it now stands revealed before our eyes, the still-birth which was mangled in the womb by the obstetricians of art. — Henry Miller

To be honest, when you're younger and cooler, you say those sort of things don't mean anything, but then on the day when they pat you on the back and they say, Look, mate, we're noticing what you're doing-thanks very much;' you think of the people who spent a life in the cinema and didn't receive that kind of accolade, and it's sort of a humbling experience. And it's very nice and all that. But it doesn't change the way I do things. — Russell Crowe

I look on cinema as a pulpit, and use it as a propagandist. — John Grierson

After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films. — Sam Taylor-Wood

My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention. — Joni Mitchell

The cinema should be human and be part of people's lives; it should focus on ordinary existences in sometimes extraordinary situations and places. That is what really motivates me. — Claire Denis

But you can still find good films if you read your local film critics and are willing to drive a bit. You have to be a proactive film viewer to have the most provocative cinema life. — Stephen Hunter

That was horrible. Horrible. That poor little guy."
Pex was unrepentant. "Yeah, well, he asked for it. Calling us ... all those things."
But
buried alive! That's like in that horror movie. Y'know
the one with all the horror."
I think I saw that one. With all the words going up on the screen at the end?"
Yeah, that was it. Tell you the truth, those words kinda ruined it for me. — Eoin Colfer

Radio did not kill books and television did not kill radio or movies - what television did kill was cinema newsreel. TV does it much better because it can deliver it instantly. Who wants last week's news? — Douglas Adams

I can see that cinema seems to be finished. Everybody has a bigger screen at home. I'm assuming eventually you won't need a screen at all - these iPhones will just project. — David Hockney

My cinema is an extension of myself. A sort of life-testimony of my vital experience, with my few virtues and my numerous limitations. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

To evoke the classic period of Italian cinema in a little film seemed like a great, fun thing to do. I had relations to that period. I had known Fellini and I had known Antonioni. I had made a movie with Antonioni and I had visited Fellini in his studios. So, it seemed like something worthwhile doing. You bring yourself to that mythical cinema. — Wim Wenders

It is very good to bridge the gaps between Indian and international cinema. — Anurag Kashyap

Everybody else, they're wonderful, but [Robert] Duvall sets the tone for all of cinema acting. So just to be in his space was amazing. — Peter Jacobson

We don't experience things collectively or cathartically anymore. Viewing has become an intensely private, fetishistic, compulsive process that happens separately from others, and that reflects not only our relation to cinema as a space of possibility, belief, and imagination. But more generally, of what could be, of readiness, which is what the movies have historically been about - the ability to act on things and change. — Masha Tupitsyn

Music is one of the important things for me in cinema. — Guillaume Canet

In truth, the cinema as a delivery system obviously has its days numbered. And that's not a bad thing. When you can buy any book in the world on your iPad, or off Amazon, you don't go the public library. The public library becomes about homeless gentlemen sleeping in chairs. — William Monahan

I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images. — Georges Duhamel

ALPHA-60: Your name is written "Ivan Johnson," but it is pronounced "Lemmy Caution," Secret Agent Zero Zero Three of the Outlands. You are a threat to the security of Alphaville.
CAUTION: I refuse to become what you call "normal."
...
ALPHA-60: You cannot escape. The door is locked.
CAUTION: Try to stop me, pal. — Jean-Luc Godard

I think "Avatar" is kind of a unique category where people are enjoying the unique theatrical experience even though they may have seen it on the small screen. They want to have that immersive, transportive experience. "2001: A Space Odyssey" played for three years at the Loews cinema in Toronto. I remember that. It just kept playing. People wanted to return to that experience. That may not be the best example because I think "2001" took 25 years to break even. — James Cameron

I don't think I can speak of the achievements of Indian cinema because it's so large next to me. It's not stopping. It's ever-growing. We are going towards the right direction. We are evolving as a filmmaking industry as actors, directors, producers, singers, musicians. Everybody just pushing the boundaries. — Ranbir Kapoor

There is no golden rule of dating, except to make sure that it engages both of you; too many people go to a cinema for a first date and of course don't say a word, that's a bad thing! — Steven Hill

I saw 'The Exorcist' at the cinema when I was quite young, maybe 14. When I went back home, my mum and dad weren't in, so I had to wait for them on the main road. I were too scared to enter the house. — Sean Bean

My influences come from real life. I'm not interested in cinema for cinema's sake. I'm interested in life - what one does and how one interacts. — Steven Rodney McQueen

It is also difficult to articulate the subtleties in cinema, because there aren't words or metaphors which describe many of the emotions you are attempting to evoke. — Conrad Hall

I want to become actor not because I want money and become more famous. No I don't want that. It is not that l want stardom, I want to contribute to good cinema. — Terence Lewis

I am very sensitive to all form of music, painting, sculpting, dancing, and I love cinema also. For example if I look at the work of the dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who happens to be a friend of mine, everything he does is inspiring to me. — Philippe Petit

I've done about 15 movies and four television series in Mexico. My last two movies were the highest grossing in Mexican-cinema history - 'Nosotros los Nobles' and 'Instructions Not Included.' — Karla Souza

In a sense I feel very much a part of the cinema now in a way where when I come back to the theater now I feel like a visitor. The cinema is really what I enjoy. I want to do more independent movies. — Brian Cox

I make every movie and every scene like it could be my last. That's the only way I know how to make cinema that stands on its feet. I have to treat it like that. It has to be life and death stakes. — David O. Russell

You see thousands of films you forget the minute you come out of the cinema, don't you? Because they don't mean anything. It's the tough ones like 'Breaking the Waves' and 'Nil By Mouth' that stay with you, that you never forget. I'd like to leave a few of those behind if possible. — Olivia Colman

Art reflects society. Cinema doesn't dictate - you portray what the society demands. — Sonam Kapoor

I look at the human sciences as poetic sciences in which there is no objectivity, and I see film as not being objective, and cinema verite as a cinema of lies that depends on the art of telling yourself lies. If you're a good storyteller then the lie is more true than reality, and if you're a bad one, the truth is worse than a half lie. — Jean Rouch

The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world more in harmony with our desires. — Jean-Luc Godard

The novelistic attribute of my work is very much like the Russian way of creating novels. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky - their work has so many gaps. But for the reader, you cannot erase those gaps because they are important. They contextualize the whole struggle. My cinema is like that. — Lav Diaz

I sometimes feel that I am trying to dig in the world around me. I'm involved in another kind of archaeology to look for another kind of truth, and the moment I find, the moment I am separated from that life, the moment I am sort of in a world, every time I have gone out and performed in the, in the cinema for example, if you do two or three films on the trot you suddenly have this impression that you're becoming separate or separated from the world around you. — Simon McBurney

The common where we had walked the previous evening was a deserted tract of land, typical of Surrey, looking as if it might be miles from any habitation, while only a few deciduous trees divided it from country studded with bungalows. Some of the land showed traces of heath fires, charred roots and stones lying about on the blackened ground. Walking there was not at all like being in the country. Agriculture seemed as remote as in a London street. This waste land might have been some walled-in space in the suburbs where business men practised golfstrokes; or the corner of a cinema studio used for shooting wilderness scenes. It had neither memories of the past nor hope for the future. — Anthony Powell

You go to the cinema and you realize you're watching the third act. There is no first or second act. There is this massive film-making where you spend this incredible amount of money and play right to the demographic. You can tell how much money the film is going to make by how it does on the first weekend. The whole culture is in the crap house. It's not just true in the movies, it's also true in the theater. — Dustin Hoffman

Campaign may invite a certain skepticism about democracy, but it will surely restore your faith in cinema verite. — A.O. Scott

Does it matter that the sausages are local? I'm just going to eat them, not make friends and go to the cinema with them. — Louise Rennison

Indian cinema seems to be growing very well at its own pace. — Brad Pitt

Film students should stay as far away from film schools and film teachers as possible. The only school for the cinema is the cinema. — Bernardo Bertolucci

My favourite movie is: "Dr Strangelove". (I haven't seen any films released in the past 2-5 years, I'm afraid: I don't do TV/cinema). — Charles Stross

For the casual viewer, Kurosawa's films can be an exercise in endurance. — Jerry White

I continued to stare at the empty seat because my sensation of a vibrant presence there was unrelieved. And in my staring I perceived that the fabric of the seat, the inner webbing of swirling fibers, had composed a pattern in the image of a face - an old woman's face with an expression of avid malignance - floating amidst wild shocks of twisting hair. — Thomas Ligotti

My films often have a spiritual dimension which comes from my Muslim background, and I'm happy to tackle that in cinema. — Asif Kapadia

The cinema has no boundary; it is a ribbon of dream. — Orson Welles

I'm not coming from film school. I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity. I say, 'Well, what if I make a film in this genre? What if I make this film like this?' — Wong Kar-Wai

Films are subjective - what you like, what you don't like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it's the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they've done, I want that effort there - I want that sincerity. And when you don't feel it, that's the only time I feel like I'm wasting my time at the movies. — Christopher Nolan

Vivek Oberoi is the most over rated actor in Hindi cinema — Sanjay Leela Bhansali

I happen to love working in cinema, but the theater is always there ... you know, and I would never shut the door on it. Even though it's been quite a bit of time since I've done a play, last one was in New York. — Michael York

The idea that boxing lends itself to cinema so well is because it's usually a morality play - good against evil, insecurity and triumph, fear strikes out, so the audience can really get drawn into the drama of it. Also, it was sensual and very primal. I think subliminaly we do two things - life is a fight, life is a struggle and we understand that from our early, early, early ancestors, and life is a race. — Sylvester Stallone

The cinema is death at work. — Jean Cocteau

Cinema is the greatest mirror of humanity's struggle. You see this alternative world, but you're part of it. Everybody is part of it. This is our world. — Lav Diaz

Unfortunately, cinema critics are very few in America, 400-500 people, but there are more critics of Iran. — Abbas Kiarostami

If a chemical drug like Viagra is accepted by society and by the world to ignite desire, then what is the problem with my audio-visual drug called cinema which ignites desire? Both are basically doing the same thing! — Mallika Sherawat

What then is the difference between film and theatre? Or should one not rather ask: what are the differences? Let us be content wi th the reply that the screen has two dimensions and the stage three, that the screen presents photographs and the stage living actors. All the subtler differences stem from these. The camera can show us all sorts of things
from close-ups of insects to panoramas of prairies
which the stage cannot even suggest, and it can move from one to another with much more dexterity than any conceivable stage. The stage, on the other hand, can be revealed in the unsurpassable beauty of three-dimensional shapes, and the stage actor establishes between himself and his audience a contact real as electricity. — Eric Bentley

I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from. — David Foster Wallace

Although it is a fantasy film, it's as real as it can be. You have to imagine that an audience will buy their ticket to a cinema and get on a first-class flight and journey to Middle Earth. — Orlando Bloom

I love escaping into film, because everyday life I find quite troublesome. So any excuse to go into a cinema and say goodbye to the world for a couple of hours, or in a book or whatever, is great. — Alison Goldfrapp

A decade or so ago, all over the world, cinemas underwent one of those prince-into-frog mutations, and became, instead popcorn-restaurants, which offered the option of visual diversions for diners. — Kevin Myers

If an irreducible distinction between theatre and cinema does exist, it may be this: Theatre is confined to a logical or continuous use of space. Cinemahas access to an alogical or discontinuous use of space. — Susan Sontag

Without community events like NewFest, I don't think we'd have a queer cinema in America. — Ira Sachs

One gets the sense that, for Deleuze, the cinema of the movement-image has been fully realized while that of the time-image is emergent. Comparatively speaking, there are few "pure" examples of films where direct images of time predominate. Mixed or hybrid examples are more common. — D. N. Rodowick

I love these kind of movies as a kind of cinema-going geek myself. Those characters, you want to be like those characters when you go to the movies. You know, when you see a movie with a guy who's really cool and the killing's slick and easy. I don't know. There's something intoxicating about it. — Pierce Brosnan

The flirty old moon eased his way across the warped and sooty floorboards and kissed my bare toes, turning my feet as luminous as the skin of cinema stars. — Cat Winters

Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates. — Werner Herzog

We didn't need sex. We had Tyrone Power. — Barbara Cartland

Cinema has become my life. I don't mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film. — Pedro Almodovar

I am going to produce a movie of my own. I am not going to stick to the time-tested formulae of Hindi cinema. I want to make a film for the present generation. So there will be a lot of new faces in the film. — Kabir Bedi

The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book. — Yann Martel

From the front row of the balcony, I look out over the Uptown Cinema. The red velvet seats are emptying, the credits scrolling up the screen. Ginger Rogers married a Nazi, but Cary Grant got her out of it. Their ship is sailing to America; sun burns away the fog and the wind blows free. Now they are gone and I am coming back to reality, breathing a harsher air. It is how I always feel when a movie ends. — Kermit Roosevelt III

I think part of the reason ideas haven't come in is that the world of cinema is changing so drastically, and in a weird way, feature films I think have become cheap. Everything is kind of throwaway. It's experienced and then forgotten. — David Lynch

I once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life. It is your recognition that brings them to life. It is your indifference that kills them. I hope that you will understand; that you when you leave the cinema will take with you an experience or a sudden thought - or maybe a question. The efforts of my friends and myself have then not been in vain ... — Ingmar Bergman

The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images. — John Updike

Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects? — Sergei Eisenstein

Every medium has its own kind of freedom. I don't want to just cross from one to the next. I want to enjoy the freedom each one has. Sometimes, you can do something for TV that you can't do in the cinema. — Takashi Miike

Far from being a pack of baying butchers,critics sometimes have a perverse habit of tending to the sick and wounded on the cinematic field of battle, rushing in where angels fear to tread, even when the patient is clearly without a pulse. — Mark Kermode

You realize true magic of cinema when you put the right people together, at the right time, with the right kind of project, where they're not worried about their salary, they're not worried about their caravan. — Jean-Marc Barr