42 Quotes by Michelangelo Antonioni

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 them in empty space.

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.

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

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