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Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes
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I dislike judging myself, but I will say I would be wealthy today if I had accepted all the films that have been offered to me with large sums of money. But I've always refused, in order to do what I felt like doing.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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Today we no longer know what to call art, what its function is and even less what function it will have in the future. We know only that it is something dynamic - unlike many ideas that have governed us.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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I want an actor to try to give me what I ask in the best and most exact way possible. He mustn't try to find out more, because then there's the danger that he'll become his own director.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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I'm not rich and maybe I'll never be rich. Money is useful - yes - but I don't worship it.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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Another reason for switching to color is world television. In a few years, it will all be in color, and you can't compete against that with black-and-white films.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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I've always dreamed of getting to know the women of other countries better. When I was a boy, I remember, I used to get angry at the thought that I did not know German or American or Swedish women.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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There are many ways of communicating. Some hold the theory that new forms of communication between people can be obtained through hallucinogenic drugs.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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Before each new setup, I chase everyone off the set in order to be alone and look through the camera. In that moment, the film seems quite easy. But then the others come in and everything becomes difficult.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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I've made films about the middle classes because I know them best. Everyone talks about what he knows best.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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I've always played down the drama in my films. In my main scenes, there's never an opportunity for an actor to let go of everything he's got inside. I always try to tone down the acting, because my stories demand it, to the point where I might change a script so that an actor has no opportunity to come out well.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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Fitzgerald said a very interesting thing in his diary; that human life proceeds from the good to the less good - that is, it's always worse as you go on. That's true.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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One of the problems of the future world will be the use of leisure time. How will it be filled up? Maybe drugs will be distributed free of charge by the government.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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The family today counts for less and less. Why? Who knows - the growth of science, the Cold War, the atomic bomb, the world war we've made, the new philosophies we've created; certainly something is happening to man, so why go against it, why oblige this new man to live by the mechanisms and regulations of the past?
Michelangelo Antonioni
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I believe in the autobiographical concept only to the degree that I am able to put onto film all that's passing through my head at the moment of shooting.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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I'm more or less skeptical about marriage, because of family ties, relations between children and parents - it's all so depressing.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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I find that it is very useful to look over the location and to feel out the atmosphere while waiting for the actors. It may happen that the images before my eyes coincide with those I had in my mind, but this is not frequently the case. It more often happens that there is something insincere or artificial about the image one has thought of. Here again is another way of improvising.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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We know that under the image revealed there is another which is truer to reality and under this image still another and yet again still another under this last one, right down to the true image of that reality, absolute, mysterious, which no one will ever see or perhaps right down to the decomposition of any image, of any reality.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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You must be painter who takes a canvas and does what he likes with it. We are more like painters in past centuries who were ordered to paint frescoes to specific measurements. Among the people in the fresco may be a bishop, the prince's wife, etc. The fresco isn't bad simply because the painter used for models people from the court of the prince who ordered and paid for it.
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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
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When we say a character in my films doesn't function, we mean he doesn't function as a person, but he does function as a character — that is, until you take him as a symbol. At that point it is you who are not functioning. Why not simply accept him as a character, without judging him? Accept him for what he is. Accept him as a character in a story, without claiming that he derives or acquires meaning from that story. There may be meanings, but they are different for all of us.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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Happiness is like the bluebird of Maeterlinck: try to catch it and it loses its color. It's like trying to hold water in your hands. The more you squeeze it, the more it runs away.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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Modern life is very difficult for people who are unprepared. But this new environment will eventually facilitate more realistic relationships between people.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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My characters are ambiguous. Call them that. I don't mind. I am ambiguous myself. Who isn't?
Michelangelo Antonioni
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When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it. My technique, which differs from film to film, is wholly instinctive and never based on a priori considerations.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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For me, from the moment when the first, still unformed, idea comes into my head until the projection of the rushes, the process of making a film constitutes a single piece of work. I mean that I cannot become interested in anything, day or night, which is not that film. Let no one imagine that this is a romantic pose — on the contrary. I become relatively more lucid, more attentive, and almost feel as if I were intelligent and more ready to understand.
Michelangelo Antonioni
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Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
Michelangelo Antonioni
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Born:
September 29, 1912
Died:
July 30, 2007
(aged 94)
Bio:
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer.
Known for:
Blowup (1966)
L'Avventura (1960)
L'Eclisse (1962)
The Night (1961)
Red Desert (1964)
Most used words:
film
people
image
character
reality
moment
actor
story
reasons
work
find
shooting
scene
mind
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