Bernardo Bertolucci Quotes
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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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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 wanted already to be a filmmaker after I saw 'La Dolce Vita.'
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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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You live day by day. You can't build your life.
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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 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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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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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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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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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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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 left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.
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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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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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I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks.
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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.
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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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I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those.
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I saw 'Avatar' and liked it very much. It was a great achievement.
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I don't see my movies. I think it's healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I'm afraid to be disappointed.
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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 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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When I shoot, I try to feel the body and the face and the weight of the actor, because the character until that moment is only in the pages of the script. And very often, I pull from the life of my actors. I'm always curious about what these characters and these actors are hiding about their lives.