Michelangelo Antonioni quotes

Michelangelo Antonioni was an Italian film director and screenwriter known for his visually striking and innovative cinema. His films explore themes of alienation, modernity, and existentialism. He influenced generations of filmmakers and remains a key figure in cinematic history. Here are 59 of his quotes:

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules. (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing. View quote
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. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
People are always misquoting me. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
For me, from the moment when the first, still unformed, idea comes into my head until the projection of the rushes, the process of making a film constitutes a single piece of work. I mean that I cannot become interested in anything, day or night, which is not that film. Let no one imagine that this is a romantic pose - on the contrary. I become relatively more lucid, more attentive, and almost feel as if I were intelligent and more ready to understand. (Michelangelo Antonioni)
When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it. My technique, which differs from film to film, is wholly instinctive and never based on a priori considerations. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
The principle behind the cinema, like that behind all the arts, rests on a choice. It is, in Camus' words, "the revolt of the artist against the real." If one holds to this principle, what difference can it make by what means reality is revealed? Whether the author of a film seizes on the real in a novel, in a newspaper story or in his own imagination, what counts is the way he isolates it, stylizes it, makes it his own. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
I always want to tell stories. But they must be stories that evolve, like our own lives. Perhaps what I seek is a new kind of story. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
I would like to make clear that I speak only of sensations. I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
We know that under the image revealed there is another which is truer to reality and under this image still another and yet again still another under this last one, right down to the true image of that reality, absolute, mysterious, which no one will ever see or perhaps right down to the decomposition of any image, of any reality. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
I find that it is very useful to look over the location and to feel out the atmosphere while waiting for the actors. It may happen that the images before my eyes coincide with those I had in my mind, but this is not frequently the case. It more often happens that there is something insincere or artificial about the image one has thought of. Here again is another way of improvising. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
Modern life is very difficult for people who are unprepared. But this new environment will eventually facilitate more realistic relationships between people. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
I've always said that the actor is only an element of the image, rarely the most important. The actor is important with his dialogue, with the landscape, with a gesture - but the actor in himself is nothing. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
My characters are ambiguous. Call them that. I don't mind. I am ambiguous myself. Who isn't? View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
When we say a character in my films doesn't function, we mean he doesn't function as a person, but he does function as a character - that is, until you take him as a symbol. At that point it is you who are not functioning. Why not simply accept him as a character, without judging him? Accept him for what he is. Accept him as a character in a story, without claiming that he derives or acquires meaning from that story. There may be meanings, but they are different for all of us. (Michelangelo Antonioni)
When we find ourselves up against practical obstacles that can't be overcome, we must go forward. You either make the film as you can or don't make it at all. View quote
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. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
One doesn't enter groups of people simply because one wants or needs to. One has an infinite number of opportunities that occur for no particular reason. Sometimes you feel a sudden unexpected pleasure at being where you find yourself. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni
Sometimes I pick up a magazine and read a piece of film criticism - to the end only if I like it. I don't like those which are too free with praise because their reasons seem wrong and that annoys me. Critics who attack me do so for such contradictory reasons that they confuse me, and I am afraid that if I am influenced by one, I will sin according to the standards of the other. View quote
Michelangelo Antonioni