The point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself.
Prefer what intuition whispers in your ear to what you have done and redone ten times in your head.
Unbalance so as to re-balance.
It is in its pure form that an art hits hard.
Empty the pond to get the fish.
Let nothing be changed and all be different.
The crude real will not by itself yield truth.
Catch instants. Spontaneity, freshness.
Ideally, nothing should be shown, but that’s impossible.
In the NUDE, all that is not beautiful is obscene.
For me, film-making is combining images and sounds of real things in an order that makes them effective. What I disapprove of is photographing things that are not real. Sets and actors are not real.
An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.
Cinema, radio, television, and magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen without hearing.
Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle.
The greater the success, the closer it verges on failure.
Traduire le vent invisible par l’eau qu’il sculpte en passant.
People are charming because they aren’t aware of their charm.
I’d rather people feel a film before understanding it.
L’oeil superficiel, l’oreille profonde et inventive. Le sifflement d’une locomotive imprime en nous la vision de toute une gare.
For myself, there is something which makes suicide possible – not even possible but absolutely necessary: it is the vision of the void, the feeling of void which is impossible to bear.
Shooting. Put oneself into a state of intense ignorance and curiosity, and yet see things in advance.