Browsing Topic Best Cinema Quotes

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.

Big things have small beginnings.

Depressed, anxious, sad, frightened? Yes. But I’ve never been bored.

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.

Cinema never saved anyone’s life, it is not a medicine that will save anyone’s life. It is only an aspirin.

I have Algerian, Turkish, Swedish, Spanish blood: I feel like a citizen of the world. Life and cinema don’t have borders.

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

Harrison Ford was pretty content as a carpenter who thought it would be nice to work on TV and ended up being the biggest film star in the history of cinema.

Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.

Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.

And having those mystical elements you see in Asian cinema and certainly Asian martial arts cinema, it’s something that we wanted to begin to introduce – the idea of spirituality and the idea of there being something else out in the world besides people who are great fighters.

We can compare classical chess and rapid chess with theatre and cinema – some actors don’t like the latter and prefer to work in the theatre.

It was Vikram Bhatt and ‘Raaz’ that got me interested in the medium of cinema. Before that, I was like any other youngster dabbling with various things – modelling, films – without a definite direction or focus. Now that I’m working with all of them, life has come full circle for me.

I’m one of the luckiest Arab actors on the planet, because I’ve done, I think, two of the finest Arab roles that have been out in mainstream cinema for a very long time.

The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema

To me, not every black filmmaker who is making black films is trying to make black cinema.

Normally I make myself swim, do exercises. For zest I like going to the cinema.

I understand when there’s no money for the arts in the government, but it should maybe pressure private companies to support more filmmakers. These exhibition and distribution companies are huge, and there might be incentives for them to invest more in Mexican cinema.

American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is – along with Jazz – the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.

American cinema is international like the fairy tales were international.

I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.

I think what I loved in cinema – and what I mean by cinema is not just films, but proper, classical cinema – are the extraordinary moments that can occur on screen. At the same time, I do feel that cinema and theater feed each other. I feel like you can do close-up on stage and you can do something very bold and highly characterized – and, dare I say, theatrical – on camera. I think the cameras and the viewpoints shift depending on the intensity and integrity of your intention and focus on that.

Even the great bad guys in cinema history, they’re likable.

I hate that people think going to the theatre is a special occasion. I wish people would treat it as normally as going to the cinema.

I wanted to be a real writer, you can put it this way, but I was lazy. So I thought that cinema would be funnier because it’s collective, and it’s crazy, and it’s chaotic, and also because I was based in Spain. So I said it will be easy to make a career of that – because all the other filmmakers there are very bad. And it will be funny at the same time. So this was the point. It will be funnier, easier, and maybe at the end there will be some unknown beauty, and maybe on the way we’ll create the dream that a different logic is possible for life.

The whole point of art, as far as I’m concerned, is that art doesn’t make any difference. And that’s why it’s important. Take film: you can have quite extreme emotional experiences watching a movie, but they stop as soon as you walk out of the cinema. You can see people being hurt, but even though you feel those things strongly, you know they’re not real.

Conventional Indian cinema is about people falling in love. They sing, they dance.

Chennai is the birthplace of a new language in cinema. The audiences here are the most evolved moviegoers to be found anywhere in India.

I think people need to understand that with plays and with cinema, when you hear about it, call and get a ticket then or go and see it then. It’s especially with the play, which I can do because it’s a limited run.

I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we’ve had.

Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don’t manage that – but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.

Usually, you have two people in a scene, and in the history of cinema the hero is most likely going to be the white guy. And the other guy is his friend who is carrying the bag or whatever, and you’re not going to light for that guy.

It is said that anyone who does commercial cinema is not acting, and anyone who does an art film is acting. I don’t believe it. I feel whenever you are doing a film, you are acting. So you need to be applauded for that. I won’t do art house cinemas. I want to make commercial films. I want my films to make money.

Of course, like all film-makers I’ve been mesmerised by cinema since I was a child.

Most big concerts sound disgusting and awful and insultingly bad. It’s like going to the cinema and been shown a scratchy film which is upsidedown and the bulb had gone on the projector. The quality of large-scale live music is so shocking.