"Film criticism, more than any other form of criticism except perhaps that of the novel, is a compromise. The critic, as much as the film, is supposed to entertain, and the great public is not interested in technicalities. The reader expects a series of dogmatic statements: he is satisfied ... with being told what is good and what is bad. If he finds himself often enough in agreement with the critic, he is content. It never occurs to him to ask why the critic thought this film good and that film bad, any more than it occurs to him to question his own taste. The fictional film is more or less stabilized at the level of middle-class taste.

One need not deny to either books or films of popular middle-class entertainment a useful social service, as long as it is recognized that social service has nothing to do with the art of cinema or the art of fiction. What I object to is the idea that it is the critic's business to assist films to fulfill a social function. The critic's business should be confined to the art."

Graham Greene, Sight & Sound, 1936 (hier zitiert)

"When shooting on Saraband was over, Bergman said goodbye and went to his island. That was two years ago. He lives there absolutely completely alone. I was there a month ago for a few days. Some of his children come there in the summer, but he doesn't have visitors. He listens to music and reads books. We made Scenes From a Marriage 30 years ago in a stable he had made into a studio. Now, he has made that into a cinema. He gets all the films sent there. He sits there with this woman who keeps cows and horses showing her films. Every new film. He knows everything that is being made."

Liv Ullmann, auch hier.

"He'd be working quietly on the island and would make one little tiny film and put it out, and then he'd be working on the next one. The work was important. Not the eventual success or failure, the money or the critical reception."

Woody Allen, über Ingmar Bergman, hier.

"Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry."

Carl Theodor Dreyer, hier zitiert

"In my films, spaces and places change [and] time is cheated in the editing. I guess that's the strength of entertainment movies: you can do anything you want, as long as these elements make the movie interesting. That's my theory of the grammar of cinema."

Seijun Suzuki, zit. hier

"Eines Abends in Le Havre, es war noch vor dem Krieg, saßen zwei Frauen in einer Kinovorstellung in einem Stadtteilkino. Zu der Zeit umfaßte eine Kinovorstellung eine Wochenschau und einen Film. Waren die beiden Frauen vor diesem Abend niemals im Kino gewesen? Oder gingen sie immer 'auf diese Weise' ins Kino? Der Zeuge dieser Geschichte hat es nie erfahren. Tatsache ist, die beiden Frauen, die nicht wußten, daß es eine Wochenschau gibt, sahen an jenem Abend einen Film, dessen erste Episode vor der Pause lief. Waren sie über ihren Abend enttäuscht? Keineswegs. Der Zeuge (der hinter ihnen saß) erzählt, daß es ihnen nach einigem Schwanken mit HIlfe verschiedener Hypothesen und Schlußfolgerungen vollkommen gelungen sei, die Wochenschau in die Erzählung des Films zu integrieren. Das habe nicht sehr lange gedauert. Recht schnell hätten sie entschieden, worum es in dem Film, in ihrem Film ging. Neben anderen wechselnden Ereignissen wohnten die Personen einem Fußballspiel bei - warum nicht? -, und während sie dort waren, weihte der Regierungschef irgendwo anders eine Brücke ein, während wiederum anderswo ein Erdbeben stattfand usw."

Marguerite Duras, Die grünen Augen, S. 96.

"Ich mag nicht alles von Duras, aber bei India Song, Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert, Le Camion und jetzt bei Aurélia Steiner weiß ich, daß sie zu dem Wichtigsten gehören, was jemals auf dem Gebiet des Films gemacht worden ist."

Marguerite Duras, in: Die grünen Augen, S. 54.

"He'll be a fine director some day," Mr. Douglas recently observed, "if he falls flat on his face just once. It might teach him how to compromise."

Kirk Douglas nach "Spartacus" über Stanley Kubrick (Quelle: New York Times)

In 1963 Roberto Rossellini called a press conference and announced: “Il cinema è morto.” “Cinema is dead.”

Alfred Hitchcock retorted: “Rossellini is dead.” Hitchcock was still begrudging Ingrid but he was not far wrong.

Rossellini had lost confidence. For four years he refused to direct. He was through with art. Civilisation was collapsing from infantilism; film's urgent task was to show the masses the map of human achievement. He marketed himself as a purveyor of educational materials. Cynics laughed as Rossellini begged funds from a steel company, Italsider, so that his son Renzo could direct the 4.5-hour The Iron Age (1964), and then convinced Jean Riboud and John de Menil to come up with $500,000 from Schlumberger, IBM, Gulf, and UpJohn so that Renzo could direct the 12-hour Italian-French-Egyptian-Roumanian Man's Struggle for Survival celebrating the conquest of nature.

French TV came to the rescue, with a nudge from Jean Gruault: La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV, which was reportedly seen by 20 million French people the first week of colour broadcasting. Italy's Christian-Democrats, not to be outdone by Guallists, replied with Acts of the Apostles. “Horizon 2000”, the new production company Riboud and de Menil had given Rossellini, was off and running.

Most of Rossellini's movies are dedicated to history. There are 36 hours of TV dramatising the past, plus 19 features on Francesco, Garibaldi, the carbonari, Christ, and World War II. His Great Plan was to film the whole history of everything, but to have others do the directing. Fellini was immoral, he maintained, because Fellini preferred to go on making Fellini movies rather than direct one of Rossellini's didactic subjects.

Bei Senses of Cinema

Die Animation einer Zeichnung ist natürlich etwas anderes als die filmische Aufzeichnung des regen Lebens der Welt. Die Vorliebe für Kontrolle um der Kontrolle willen, das akademische Ersticken oder aber eine bestimmte Art, das Bild wie ein kitschiges Heiligenbild zu betrachten (wie eine 'Aufmachung') sind die daraus entstehenden Folgen. Gezierte Romantik ist dort der Preis, wo die 'Ikonoklastie' keinen Sinn mehr hat. Es braucht profunde Cineasten, wirkliche 'Wahrheitsironiker' (wie Fellini), damit die Zeichnugn ein wenig Glauben an eine letzte Wirklichkeit hinter dem Bild behält, ohne sich in einem zynischen und faulen Dekoratismus zu verlieren.

Serge Daney, Von der Welt ins Bild (S. 25)

Bresson zum Beispiel möchte unbedingt die Genesis machen, für die Arche Noah braucht er Tiere. Dino de Laurentiis, ein Produzent, sagt ihm: Ich habe einen Zoo für Sie gefunden. Aber Bresson sagt, er will Abdrücke filmen, und zwar von wirklichen Tieren. Von wirklichen Rhinozerossen, aber nur die Spuren! De Laurentiis sind die Nerven durchgegangen.

Serge Daney, Von der Welt ins Bild (Interview, S. 158)

Meine ganze Cinephilie beruht auf der einen, übrigens recht idealistischen Idee, dass die Filme gleichsam Personen sind: man begegnet ihnen, man verliert sie aus den Augen, man trifft sie von neuem. Es wäre interessant zu analysieren, wie man einen Film deformiert, den man sehr geliebt hat, wie er in einer unwahrscheinlichen Form in uns weiterexistiert. Ich erinnere mich, dass Jean-Claude Biette und ich DAS INDISCHE GRABMAL von Fritz Lang grenzenlos bewunderten (und übrigens nach wie vor bewundern) und den Dialog so oft auswendig aufsagten, dass wir schließlich einen Satz erfunden haben, der im Film nicht enthalten und von uns beiden halluziniert worden war (dieser Satz lautet: 'Die Göttin liest in den Herzen!').

Serge Daney, Von der Welt ins Bild (Interview, S. 157)

One year, some Moroccan friends had organized a complete retrospective of his work in Tangier. A strange idea. A brilliant idea. All the reels, the heaviness, the age, the rust, the incredible number of kilograms that THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE represents were put into a diplomatic case, crossed the sea and found themselves in front of assiduous Moroccan cine-clubgoers. Would Eustache come? It was difficult to make him leave Paris, we thought. But he came and remained two days. The projection of the Eustachian opus took place, outside of time, for this audience, unprepared for all these stories of sex and desire, of the French countryside and the fauna of Montparnasse, was disconcerted. Eustache would disconcert them even more. His mildness, his patience and his manner of responding to questions with an indecipherable mix of irony and gravity, surprised everyone.

Serge Daney

An ethnologist of his own reality, Eustache could have made a career, become a good auteur, with fantasies and a vision of the world, a specialist of some sort in himself. His moral code prohibited it: he only filmed what interested him. Women, dandyism, Paris, the country and the French language. It's already a lot.

Serge Daney