Quotes by Michelangelo Antonioni

About Michelangelo Antonioni:

Michelangelo Antonioni was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer. Best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents"—L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962)—Antonioni "redefined the concept of narrative cinema" and challenged traditional approaches to storytelling, realism, drama, and the world at large. He produced "enigmatic and intricate mood pieces" and rejected action in favor of contemplation, focusing on image and design over character and story. His films defined a "cinema of possibilities".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

Michelangelo Antonioni

You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.

Michelangelo Antonioni

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.

Michelangelo Antonioni

When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film.

Michelangelo Antonioni

Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer.

Michelangelo Antonioni

Normally, however, I try to avoid repetitions of any shot.

Michelangelo Antonioni

In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!

Michelangelo Antonioni

I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see th...

Michelangelo Antonioni

But, you know, Cronaca isn't more innovative than what comes after.

Michelangelo Antonioni

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

Michelangelo Antonioni

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.

Michelangelo Antonioni

I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.

Michelangelo Antonioni

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.

Michelangelo Antonioni

When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them.

Michelangelo Antonioni

Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance.

Michelangelo Antonioni

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.

Michelangelo Antonioni

We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean.

Michelangelo Antonioni

I don't want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.

Michelangelo Antonioni

Author Bio

  • NameMichelangelo Antonioni
  • DescriptionItalian film director and screenwriter
  • BornSeptember 29, 1912
  • DiedJuly 30, 2007
  • CountryItaly
  • ProfessionFilm Director; Writer; Screenwriter