Bernardo Bertolucci Quotes
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I wanted already to be a filmmaker after I saw 'La Dolce Vita.'
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My father basically had two ways of judging anything. Either something was poetic or it wasn't.
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You live day by day. You can't build your life.
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I started in '69 to have psychoanalysis, and I realised very soon that I was changing, and that's I think why my movies were changing. They became much more open to dialogue.
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I think politics is a higher build in life. You know? If you diffuse under normal, common sense of a story, you make it political. If you choose a conventional way for a story, or refuse to use the conventional way, you make it political.
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I wanted to have a reaction from the audience. I wanted to be able to talk to somebody, and not be talking just to myself. That's when I did 'The Conformist,' 'Last Tango in Paris,' etc. And I found it was incredibly rewarding, something new.
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I accept all interpretations of my films. The only reality is before the camera. Each film I make is kind of a return to poetry for me, or at least an attempt to create a poem.
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English dialogue is the best in the world. So dry and direct. The Italian language is beautiful, but it is too literary.
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What always made me proud - almost blushing with pride - is that Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg all told me that 'The Conformist' is their first modern influence.
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I like to be in a huis clos, as the French say - in one place. It's something that in general can create a bit of claustrophobia. But for me, claustrophobia becomes almost immediately claustrophilia. I love it!
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I haven't made a movie for a while, but I've watched a lot. It's my major waste of time. I like to work, but also to be waiting for work.
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I remember being young in the 1960s... we had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.
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Sometimes I think that I understand my movies after I make them. Really. I go very often off of instinct.
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Commuting in a wheelchair is not easy. I live in a very old part of Rome. These cobbles everywhere... terrible! In London, it is the same. Every pavement is uneven.
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The conformist understands that the reason of his desperate look for conformism is that he realises he is different and that he never accepted his difference.
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I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those.
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I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks.
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English dialogues are always just what you need and nothing more - like something out of Hemingway. In Italian and in French, dialogues are always theatrical, literary. You can do more with it.
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I saw 'Avatar' and liked it very much. It was a great achievement.
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After many, many years, I fell out of love with politics. It's not something I like but it's the truth.
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I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.
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I make movies in order to make things understood, not to be shocking.
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I was writing poems when I was young, you know, because my father was a poet, so it was absolutely normal to follow my father.
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'Dreamers' was because I really wanted to go back after I heard so much nonsense about '68. I wanted to go back to what for me was '68, when young people thought that they could change the world.