98+ Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes On Art, World And Moody

Michelangelo Antonioni was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer. He is best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents" which includes L'Avventura, La Notte, and L'Eclisse. His films often explore themes of alienation, loneliness, and existentialism, and feature long takes and unconventional narrative structures. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Michelangelo Antonioni on life, love, art.

Top 10 Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes

1. 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.
2. Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.
3. I always mistrust everything I see, which an image shows me, because I imagine what is beyond it. And what is beyond an image cannot be known.
4. I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.
5. If an actor tries to understand too much, he will act in an intellectual and unnatural manner.
6. Monica Vitti is astonishingly mobile. Few actresses have such mobile features. She has her own personal and original way of acting.
7. Violence is not the only means of persuasion.
8. In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!
9. I can't imagine love without a sexual charge.
10. After you've learned two or three basic rules of cinema grammar, you can do what you like - including breaking those rules.

Michelangelo Antonioni Short Quotes

• I can't give any absolute definition of what love is, or even whether it ought to exist.
• It isn't easy to understand the lives of people different from your own.
• I'm not rich and maybe I'll never be rich. Money is useful - yes - but I don't worship it.
• I don't know whether I am ever bored. I never look at myself.
• I forget about the relationship between myself and any actress when working with her.
• Method actors are absolutely terrible. They want to direct themselves, and it's a disaster.
• In any case, the idea of giving "all" of reality is overly simple and absurd.
• Nothing regarding man is ever inhuman. That's why I make films, not iceboxes.
• There can be no censorship better than one's own conscience.
• I never feel empty. I travel a lot and I think about other films.

Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes About Life

The struggle for life is not only the material and economic one. Comfort is no protection from anxiety. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Fitzgerald said a very interesting thing in his diary; that human life proceeds from the good to the less good - that is, it's always worse as you go on. That's true. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Life should be taken ironically; otherwise, it becomes a tragedy. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes About Art

Today we no longer know what to call art, what its function is and even less what function it will have in the future. We know only that it is something dynamic - unlike many ideas that have governed us. — Michelangelo Antonioni

The public buys "art" - but the word is drained of its meaning. — Michelangelo Antonioni

We know that behind every image revealed there is another image more faithful to reality, and in the back of that image there is another, and yet another behind the last one, and so on, up to the true image of that absolute, mysterious reality that no one will ever see. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes About Talking

There's much talk about the problems of youth, but young people are not a problem. It's a natural evolution of things. We, who have known only how to make war and slaughter people, have no right to judge them, nor can we teach them anything. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I've made films about the middle classes because I know them best. Everyone talks about what he knows best. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Hollywood doesn't believe in the death penalty for anyone except people who get cable TV without paying for it. Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni Famous Quotes And Sayings

A woman's sex appeal is an inner matter. It stems from her mental make-up, basically. It's an attitude, not just a question of her physical features - that arrogant quality in a woman's femininity. Otherwise, all beautiful women would have sex appeal, which is not so. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I read somewhere that happiness is like the bluebird of Maeterlinck: Try to catch it and it loses its color. It's like trying to hold water in your hands. The more you squeeze it, the more the water runs away. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I didn't like university life much at Bologna. The subjects I studied - economics and business administration - didn't interest me. I wanted to make films. I was glad when I was graduated. Yet it's odd; on graduation day, I was overcome with a terrible sadness. I realized that my youth was over and now the struggle had begun. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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 them in empty space. — Michelangelo Antonioni

The family today counts for less and less. Why? Who knows - the growth of science, the Cold War, the atomic bomb, the world war we've made, the new philosophies we've created; certainly something is happening to man, so why go against it, why oblige this new man to live by the mechanisms and regulations of the past? — Michelangelo Antonioni

I believe in the autobiographical concept only to the degree that I am able to put onto film all that's passing through my head at the moment of shooting. — Michelangelo Antonioni

One of the problems of the future world will be the use of leisure time. How will it be filled up? Maybe drugs will be distributed free of charge by the government. — Michelangelo Antonioni

The script is simply a series of notes for the film. — Michelangelo Antonioni

When I'm sure I have a story, I call my collaborators and we begin to discuss it. And we conduct studies of certain subjects to make sure of our terrain. Then, finally, in the last month or two, I write the story. — Michelangelo Antonioni

A man who renounces something is also a man who believes in something. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I want an actor to try to give me what I ask in the best and most exact way possible. He mustn't try to find out more, because then there's the danger that he'll become his own director. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I rarely feel the desire to reread a scene the day before the shooting. Sometimes I arrive at the place where the work is to be done and I do not even know what I am going to shoot. This is the system I prefer: to arrive at the moment when shooting is about to begin, absolutely unprepared, virgin. I often ask to be left alone on the spot for fifteen minutes or half an hour and I let my thoughts wander freely. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why. — Michelangelo Antonioni

The way I relax, what I like doing most, is watching. That's why I like traveling, to have new things before my eyes - even a new face. I enjoy myself like that and can stay for hours, looking at things, people, scenery. — Michelangelo Antonioni

All I know is that we are loaded down with old and stale stuff - habits, customs, old attitudes already dead and gone. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

Favourite directors change, like favorite authors. I had a passion for Gide and Stein and Faulkner. But now they're no use to me anymore. I've assimilated them - so, enough, they are a closed chapter. This also applies to film directors. — Michelangelo Antonioni

A film that can be described in words is not really a film. — Michelangelo Antonioni

The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development- whether psychological or material- one must pass on to the actual realization. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I've always dreamed of getting to know the women of other countries better. When I was a boy, I remember, I used to get angry at the thought that I did not know German or American or Swedish women. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I dislike judging myself, but I will say I would be wealthy today if I had accepted all the films that have been offered to me with large sums of money. But I've always refused, in order to do what I felt like doing. — Michelangelo Antonioni

When you work on a character, you form in your mind an image of what he ought to look like. Then you go and find one who resembles him. — Michelangelo Antonioni

There are many ways of communicating. Some hold the theory that new forms of communication between people can be obtained through hallucinogenic drugs. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Everyone has understood me in his own way. But I would have to understand myself first in order to judge - and so far, I haven't. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Ingmar Bergman is a long way from me, but I admire him. He, too, concentrates a great deal on individuals; and although the individual is what interests him most, we are very far apart. His individuals are very different from mine; his problems are different from mine - but he's a great director. So is Fellini, for that matter. — Michelangelo Antonioni

A director is a man, therefore he has ideas; he is also an artist, therefore he has imagination. Whether they are good or bad, it seems to me that I have an abundance of stories to tell. And the things I see, the things that happen to me, continually renew the supply. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Neorealism taught us to follow the characters with the camera, allowing each shot its own real interior time. Well, I became tired of all this; I could no longer stand real time. In order to function, a shot must show only what is useful. — Michelangelo Antonioni

When I see a good film, it's like a whiplash. I run away, in order not to be influenced. Thus, the films I liked most are those I think least about. — 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'll go on making films until I make one that pleases me from the first to the last frame. Then I'll quit. — Michelangelo Antonioni

A particular type of film emerged from World War Two, with the Italian neorealist school. It was perfectly right for its time, which was as exceptional as the reality around us. Our major interest focused on that and on how we could relate to it. Later, when the situation normalized and post-war life returned to what it had been in peacetime, it became important to see the intimate, interior consequences of all that had happened. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Innovation comes spontaneously. I don't know if I've done anything new. If I have, it's just because I had begun to feel for some time that I couldn't stand certain films, certain modes, certain ways of telling a story, certain tricks of plot development, all of it predictable and useless. — 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

That love is a conflict seems to me obvious and natural. There isn't a single worthwhile work in world literature based on love that is only about the conquest of happiness, the effort to arrive at what we call love. It's the struggle that has always interested those who produce works of art - literature, cinema or poetry. — Michelangelo Antonioni

My films always leave me unsatisfied, since I've always worked under fairly disastrous conditions economically. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

The women I like, no matter what nationality, all seem to have more or less the same qualities. Perhaps this is because one goes looking for them - that is, you like that type of woman and then look for her. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I simply know what the actor's attitude should be and what he should say. He doesn't, because he can't see the relationship that begins to exist between his body and the other things in the scene. — Michelangelo Antonioni

When I see nature, when I look into the sky, the dawn, the sun, the colors of insects, snow crystals, the night stars, I don't feel a need for God. Perhaps when I can no longer look and wonder, when I believe in nothing - then, perhaps, I might need something else. But I don't know what. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Another reason for switching to color is world television. In a few years, it will all be in color, and you can't compete against that with black-and-white films. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Do you really think a man must be strong, masculine, dominating, and the woman frail, obedient and sensitive? This is a conventional idea. Reality is quite different. — 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

My work is like digging, it's archaeological research among the arid materials of our times. That's how I understand my first films, and that's what I'm still doing... — Michelangelo Antonioni

Before each new setup, I chase everyone off the set in order to be alone and look through the camera. In that moment, the film seems quite easy. But then the others come in and everything becomes difficult. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

I would throw out the sense of nation, "good breeding," certain forms and ceremonies that govern relationships - perhaps even jealousy. We're not aware of all of them yet, though we suffer from them. And they mislead us not only about ethics but also about aesthetics. — Michelangelo Antonioni

It's only human and natural that an actor should see the film in terms of his own part, but I, as a director, have to see the film as a whole. He must therefore collaborate selflessly, totally. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about. — Michelangelo Antonioni

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

A film you can explain in words is not a real film. — 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

Sometimes actors' mistakes give me ideas I can use, because mistakes are always sincere, absolutely sincere. — Michelangelo Antonioni

The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up. — Michelangelo Antonioni

You can't go to an LSD or pot party unless you take it yourself. If I want to go, I must take drugs myself. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness. — Michelangelo Antonioni

It's untrue to say the colors I use are not those of reality. They are real: The red I use is red; the green, green; blue, blue; and yellow, yellow. It's a matter of arranging them differently from the way I find them, but they are always real colors. So it's not true that when I tint a road or a wall, they become unreal. They stay real, though colored differently for my scene. — 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

Actors are always a little high at work. Acting is their drug. So when you put the brakes on, they're naturally a little disappointed. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Women are a finer filter of reality. They can sniff things. — Michelangelo Antonioni

You cannot penetrate events with reportage. — Michelangelo Antonioni

People are always misquoting me. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Reality has a quality of freedom about it that is hard to explain. — Michelangelo Antonioni

My films have always had an element of immediate autobiography, in that I shoot any particular scene according to the mood I'm in that day, according to the little daily experiences I've had and am having - but I don't tell what has happened to me. I would like to do something more strictly autobiographical, but perhaps I never will, because it isn't interesting enough. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I'm more or less skeptical about marriage, because of family ties, relations between children and parents - it's all so depressing. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I've always played down the drama in my films. In my main scenes, there's never an opportunity for an actor to let go of everything he's got inside. I always try to tone down the acting, because my stories demand it, to the point where I might change a script so that an actor has no opportunity to come out well. — Michelangelo Antonioni

I've never had a method of working. I change according to circumstances; I don't employ any particular technique or style. I make films instinctively, more with my belly than with my brain. — Michelangelo Antonioni

Life Lessons by Michelangelo Antonioni

1. Michelangelo Antonioni's work emphasizes the importance of exploring the inner lives of characters and allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions from the story.
2. His films often focus on themes of alienation, isolation, and a search for meaning in a world of chaos and disorder.
3. His unique visual style and use of symbolism can teach us to look beyond the surface of a story and to appreciate the complexity of the human experience.