A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts – for that is what words are; but cinema, like music, allows for utterly direct, emotional, sensuous perception of the work.
I think in fact that unless there is an organic link between the subjective impressions of the author and his objective representation of reality, he will not achieve even superficial credibility, let alone authenticity and inner truth.
An artist who has no faith is like a painter who was born blind.
Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical.
Knowledge is truthful only if it’s based in morality.
The Stalker seems to be weak, but essentially it is he who is invincible because of his faith and his will to serve others.
Objectivity can only be the author’s and therefore subjective, even if he is editing a newsreel.
I have a horror of tags and labels. I don’t understand, for instance, how people can talk about Bergman’s “symbolism”. Far from being symbolic, be seems to me, through and almost biological naturalism, to arrive at the spiritual truth about human life that is important to him.
The meaning of religious truth is hope.
Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored.
An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty.
It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.
Of course life has no point. If it had, man would not be free.
I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility.
The artist is always a servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed in sacrifice.
If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, it piques your interest, and if you make it even longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.
Never trouble anyone else with what you can do yourself.
A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?
All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love.
My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware the beauty is summoning him.
It is perfectly possible to be a professional director or a professional writer and not to be an artist: merely a sort of executor of other people’s ideas.