Do you remember in M once the child is killed? She was playing with a ball and then he buys her a balloon. Now, we see just a bush and then the ball rolls out and comes to a standstill. Immediately we know that the girl is dead and then we see the balloon flying away. This is action, in a certain way. It is not violence.

At the time when I did M, I had to show one thing—how a murderer rapes a child, right? Let us say he slits her up. Fine. Aside from the fact that it is very horrible to look at, and very tactless, it is only one way to show it and many people would look away. But if you don't show it—if you just let the audience know what happened—then every single man and woman can imagine the most horrible things, correct? And then they help me. I don't show any violence and I don't have to show them the horrible thing of how a child has been raped.

...I always thought that I never showed violence, which is wrong. Have you seen the fight in Cloak and Dagger? This fight is violent. I was very proud. Gary Cooper, who usually never made a fight—his double made the fights—he made this fight. I am, let me call myself, a liberal, which is not very correct, but let me call me that; and I hate fascists, and this was the fight of a decent man against a fascist. So, seemingly, my hatred got the better hand of me.

Fritz Lang
from an interview with Lloyd Chesley and Michael Gould, 1972

I've noticed, from my own experience, if the external, emotional construction of images in a film are based on the filmmaker's own memory, on the kinship of one's personal experience with the fabric of the film, then the film will have the power to affect those who see it. If the director follows only the superficial, literal base of the film, for example the screenplay, even if in the most convincing, realistic, and conscientious manner, the viewer will be left unaffected.

Therefore, if you're objectively incapable of influencing a viewer with his own experience, as in literature..., and you're unable to achieve that in principal, then in cinema, you should sincerely tell about your own experience. That's why even now, when all half-literate people have learned to make movies, cinema remains an art form, which only a small number of directors have actually mastered, and they can be counted with the fingers of one hand. To remold a literary work into the frames of a film means to tell your version of the literary source, filtering it through yourself.

Andrei Tarkovsky

from an interview with Naum Abramov, 1970

Bring together things that have as yet never been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.

Robert Bresson
from Notes on the Cinematographer

I've always loved narration 'cause it's kind of intravenous feeding, ya know? You're getting nourishment but you can't taste it 'cause it's just slipping into your veins.

Paul Schrader
from The Rules of Film Noir

All those effects you can get from repetition (of an image, of a sound).

Robert Bresson
from Notes on the Cinematographer

I'd rather people feel a film before understanding it. I'd rather feelings arise before intellect.

[Regarding Pickpocket:] Rather than having a story I wanted to tell, I wanted people to feel the atmosphere that surrounds a thief, that particular atmosphere, that makes people anxious and uncomfortable.

Robert Bresson
from a filmed interview regarding Pickpocket.

...the domain of cinematography* is the domain of the unsayable.

Robert Bresson
from an interview with Le Monde, March 14th, 1967

*..."cinematography" for Bresson has the special meaning of creative filmmaking which thoroughly exploits the nature of film as such. It should not be confused with the work of a cameraman.
- annotation from Notes on the Cinematographer

Imagine that we are sitting in a very ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. Instantly, the room we are sitting in is completely altered. Everything in it has taken on another look. The light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed and the objects are as we conceive them. This is the effect I wanted to produce in Vampyr.

Carl Th. Dreyer
from [unknown]

I know one thing: to make something hot, it must be done coolly. Your approach must be cool for the result to be hot. This "coldness" I've been accused of is a completely arbitrary judgment, because I've seen people deeply moved by my films. I believe it's not by trying to imitate life and using actors pretending to live that we can get emotion.

Robert Bresson
from Cinema: "Travelling" (Frederic Rossif, 1967)

Look, I just have a way of telling my stories that is kind of my way, but I don't ever really know what that way is when I start. There is this whole process to me when it comes to writing and even making it, but in particularly writing. There's this whole process that I'm-because I don't do it all the time, that I'm always remembering how I do what I do as I'm doing it. "Oh yes! Of course!"

...It's really easy to just take somebody else's script and find something about it that is interesting and maybe you rewrite it or maybe you work with that dude and make it come to be. But starting with a blank piece of paper and a pen, that's starting from square one. You get no gold stars for anything you've ever done before 'cause you are starting from square one all over again. You're at the bottom of the mountain and you've gotta climb to the top...

...I get a thrill when I just keep having these little epiphanies of "Oh yes, okay, yeah, alright. I shouldn't have worried about that because this is how I do it." And, you know, it's like I'm remembering who I am, you know, through the process. And I think that actually is part of the writing process.

Quentin Tarantino
from myspace Artist on Artist with Eli Roth (2009)

When I watch this film (Repulsion) today, I realize that I didn't really progress much in directing actors. It's just question of giving them the right ideas and then they pick it up. I really learned most of it watching movies; watching movies at the film school where we saw it day and night, three a day sometimes. Going a lot to the movies. More you see, more you become critical of the actors' performances and having started as a child actor, you know, I obviously had some kind of talent that combined with lot of movie going helped me to be able to recreate behavior which seems natural and original.

What makes acting interesting is when the reaction is authentic, real, and yet original...that's not what you actually anticipate as a reaction. ...That makes it more interesting.

Roman Polanski
from Repulsion audio commentary track

Not to shoot a film in order to illustrate a thesis, or to display men and women confined to their external aspect, but to discover the matter they are made of. To attain that "heart of the heart" which does not let itself be caught either by poetry, or by philosophy, or by drama.

Robert Bresson
from Notes on the Cinematographer

To your models: "Don't think what you're saying, don't think what you're doing." And also: "Don't think about what you say, don't think about what you do."

Radically suppress intentions in your models.

Robert Bresson
from Notes on the Cinematographer

My apprenticeship lasted five years, and I don't think many have had a better schooling. After all, it's from the daily grind of making films that you learn the craft.

Carl Th. Dreyer
from [unknown]

Tim Robbins: What makes a good movie?
Samuel Fuller: Story.

Samuel Fuller
from The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera (1996)

For me, film allows us to reveal the least understood truths of man. It pushes on the floor of dreams or nightmares.

Werner Herzog
from Herzog on Herzog (pg. 216)

In general, I choose actors because of what they are as human beings, not because of what they can do. Terence Stamp was offended by this because I never asked him to demonstrate his acting ability. It was like stealing from him, using his reality. I had a similar experience with Anna Magnani on Mamma Roma. She also felt I was stealing from her.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

from New York Times interview (1968)

You know, we’re all here to learn from each other; we’re reflections for each other. Through Billy’s (Billy Price, Billy the Kid [2007]) experiences, I was having all these feelings, reflections on my own life. I feel the same way about casting. The people that I find, that I respond to, help tell the story of where I am in my life.

Jennifer Venditti
from an interview with Still in Motion (2007)

I've never wanted to make a conclusive statement. I've always posed various problems and left them open to consideration.

Pier Paolo Pasolini
from A Film Maker's Life (1971)

My films are about as anthropological as the music of Gesualdo and the images of Caspar David Friedrich. They are anthropological only in as much as they try to explore the human condition at this particular time on this planet. I do not make films using images only of clouds and trees, I work with human beings because the way they function in different cultural groups interests me. If that makes me an anthropologist then so be it. But I never think in terms of strict ethnography: going out to some distant island with the explicit purpose of studying the natives there. My goal is always to find out more about man himself, and film is my means. According to its nature, film does not have so much to do with reality as it does with our collective dreams. It chronicles our state of mind. The purpose is to record and guide, as chroniclers did in past centuries.

Werner Herzog
from Herzog on Herzog