Werner Herzog - Film Quotes

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You should look straight at a film; that's the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

Werner Herzog
Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.

Werner Herzog
If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!

Werner Herzog
The kinds of landscape I try to find in my films... exist only in our dreams. For me a true landscape is not just a representation of a desert or a forest. It shows an inner state of mind, literally inner landscapes, and it is the human soul that is visible through the landscapes presented in my films.

Werner Herzog
Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.

Werner Herzog
If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.

Werner Herzog
Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.

Werner Herzog
Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect.

Werner Herzog