328 Quotes About Cinema

In this business, until you're known as a monster, you're not a star

I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from.

For the casual viewer, Kurosawa’s films can be an exercise in endurance.

Here’s the premise: you’re in a bunker in the post-apocalyptic world. (I’m assuming that, by the date of publication, this will still be a “premise.”) You’ve managed, almost magically, to bring with you the 10 movies, but only 10 movies, you’ll be able to watch for the rest of your days.

I continued to stare at the empty seat because my sensation of a vibrant presence there was unrelieved. And in my staring I perceived that the fabric of the seat, the inner webbing of swirling fibers, had composed a pattern in the image of a face—an old woman's face with an expression of avid malignance—floating amidst wild shocks of twisting hair.

Is a camera as precise as the human eye? No way, it is not empowered by the brain.

The image in cinema is based on the ability to present as an observation one's own perception of an object

The angel said, "I like black-and-white films more than color because they're more artificial. You have to work harder to overcome your disbelief. It's sort of like prayer.

Life must go on, yes, but in the end—after the end—life was not important, just pictures on a screen, absorbing for as long as they lasted, causing us to weep and laugh, perhaps, but when the images are gone we step out blinking into the light.