Film Theory Quotes & Sayings

All films are learning processes. I am still trying to work out how you make a movie. I didn't study at film school or any of those things. I didn't bother with film theory. — Terry Gilliam

Most of the movies are working like, 'Information, cut, information, cut, information, cut' and for them the information is just the story. For me, a lot of things [are] information - I try to involve, to the movie, the time, the space, and a lot of other things - which is a part of our life but not connecting directly to the story-telling. And I'm working on the same way - 'information, cut, information, cut,' but for me the information is not only the story. — Bela Tarr

If hope is a feeling that can defeat fear,
then at that time I walked uphill through a bed of snow, my tracks were of joyful determination. — Angelica Hopes

My favorite laser disk ever was the laser disk for The Graduate, which had a commentary track that wasn't even the filmmakers, it was a professor, some film criticism guy who just happen to be this amazing commentator who went off into the whole theory of comedy. — Jay Roach

Film theory has nothing to do with film. — Roger Ebert

I have this theory that if you do a film, those who have not fallen asleep or left the cinema, they will live with the film much longer, and it will really enter their imagination and the subconscious much more profoundly. — Pawel Pawlikowski

It's like a fairy tale. . . on crack! — Hillary DePiano

My filmmaking style of remixing came out of necessity. When I was a film theory student at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, there were no film production facilities. The only way I learned to tell stories on film was by re-cutting and splicing together celluloid of old movies, early animated films, home films, sound slug - anything I could get my hands on. — Elisa Kreisinger

When the sun dies we will become one. — Ruth Stone

Employee engagement is an investment we make for the privilege of staying in business. — Ian Hutchinson

No-one knows anything. Anyone who tells you they do ... is full of bollocks. — Melissa Keil

I have a theory ... Theatre actors are better at auditions than film actors. — Shaun Sipos

As attentive readers may have noted, the standard narrative of heterosexual interaction boils down to prostitution: a woman exchanges her sexual services for access to resources. Maybe mythic resonance explains part of the huge box-office appeal of a film like Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere's character trades access to his wealth in exchange for what Julia Roberts's character has to offer (she plays a hooker with a heart of gold, if you missed it). Please note that what she's got to offer is limited to the aforementioned heart of gold, a smile as big as Texas, a pair of long, lovely legs, and the solemn promise that they'll open only for him from now on. The genius of Pretty Woman lies in making explicit what's been implicit in hundreds of films and books. According to this theory, women have evolved to unthinkingly and unashamedly exchange erotic pleasure for access to a man's wealth, protection, status, and other treasures likely to benefit her and her children. — Christopher Ryan

Genius has oftenest been the pariah of his time, the unhoused god whom none cared for, unnamed till they whom he first promoted, enriched and honored, found it honorable to own their benefactor. — Amos Bronson Alcott

Since there are Indian movies, of necessity there is an Indian film theory that informs Indian scholars. However, that theory remains to be formulated. — Gaston Roberge

I was really fortunate that I went to a high school where we actually had a film theory program. — David Brooks

The British churchgoer prefers a severe preacher because he thinks a few home truths will do his neighbors no harm. — George Bernard Shaw

I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct. — Charlie Hunnam

The Colonel grunted. "In my experience, those things don't have to try to scare the shit out of anyone. If she wanted you dead or broken, you would be. Vampires have - idiomatic speech patterns. You may have simply misunderstood her." "She called me a cold cut. — Peter Watts

At college, she found the fashion courses "disposable" and more current than the film texts that she studied.[14] Maya told Arthur magazine "[Students there were] exploring apathy, dressing up in some pigeon outfit, or running around conceptualising... It missed the whole point of art representing society. Social reality didn't really exist there; it just stopped at theory. — M.I.A.

I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film. — Jeff Bridges

Don't get seduced by your own stuff. Don't get high on your own supply. The hardest thing as a filmmaker is when you're watching a film that you've worked on for several years. You know every frame so intimately that holding lots of the objectivity of a new viewer who has just seen it for the first time is the hardest thing. Every aesthetic decision you make - and you make thousands of them every day, have to - in theory, must be done from you being a blank slate. You almost have to run a program, like a mind wipe, every time you watch the movie. — James Cameron

You can talk film theory till you're blue in the face, but in the end, the thing that may haunt you most about a movie is a pair of eyes. — Stephanie Zacharek

I have a theory that most people disagree with. I really feel that acting for film and acting for the stage are two different crafts. I think that they share things in common. But I liken it to a painter switching over to photography. — Jordan Bridges

I went to the University of Toronto to study the history and theory of film, in the back of my mind thinking I'd go to NYU film school and see if I could make a career of it. — Tom Rachman

When I was in film school, I was learning more theory than practice. — Louis Leterrier

The problem with feature filmmaking is that it offers you this mirage of being able to achieve perfection, as the theory of it is that you have control of every part of the film, though in reality, it is as inexact as the next thing in your life. — Kapil Sharma

Despite the variety of my explorations, throughout it all it has been my contention that my responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment. — Carrie Mae Weems

Film's thought of as a director's medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It's that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they've had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve. — Billy Wilder

I never studied film theory, so I don't know the terminology. — Allan Moyle

I'm always encouraging my fans to be resilient lovers and fighters simultaneously. — Darren Fletcher

One absolutely crucial change is that feminist film theory is today an academic subject to be studied and taught. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" was a political intervention, primarily influenced by the Women's Liberation Movement and, in my specific case, a Women's Liberation study group, in which we read Freud and realised the usefulness of psychoanalytic theory for a feminist project. — Laura Mulvey

With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox, It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed. — Ted Hughes

I have this theory that your first film is always your best film in some way. I always try to get back to that moment when you're not relying on things you've done before. — Danny Boyle

The book which I read by Stephen Hand, Freedy VS Jason, was incrediable. I also check out and the book Zodiac, again an incrediable story. The Stand by Stephen King was again on incrediable story, a long book and film, but incrediable!
Theory of Everything where it put it me I still can't believe, it was unique story, I had chance to see who is Stephen Hawking really! — Deyth Banger

Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am. — Michael Cunningham

I have a great little camera, and I had a theory that if the story is interesting, it doesn't matter what medium you shoot it on. You just have to make a good film. — Tamra Davis

I can talk about film theory forever and it may sound pretentious or something, but really it's just that I'm fascinated by it. — John Hyams

The American people frankly have been, over many, many years - to be blunt - fat, dumb and happy. If they want their children to compete with children in India, China or Korea, they better get them a far better education. — Eli Broad

My best film is always my next film. I couldn't make Chungking Express now, because of the way I live and drink I've forgotten how I did it. I don't believe in film school or film theory. Just try and get in there and make the bloody film, do good work and be with people you love. — Christopher Doyle