The women I like, no matter what nationality, all seem to have more or less the same qualities. Perhaps this is because one goes looking for them - that is, you like that type of woman and then look for her. Michelangelo Antonioni More Quotes by Michelangelo Antonioni More Quotes From 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. Michelangelo Antonioni surfingspacecharacter I always mistrust everything I see, which an image shows me, because I imagine what is beyond it. And what is beyond an image cannot be known. Michelangelo Antonioni mistrustshow-meimagine My work is like digging, it's archaeological research among the arid materials of our times. That's how I understand my first films, and that's what I'm still doing... Michelangelo Antonioni diggingresearchfirsts Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing. Michelangelo Antonioni hollywoodtalking 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. Michelangelo Antonioni differencesminddoe Reality has a quality of freedom about it that is hard to explain. Michelangelo Antonioni hardqualityreality Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer. Michelangelo Antonioni moralmoonmen The struggle for life is not only the material and economic one. Comfort is no protection from anxiety. Michelangelo Antonioni anxietystrugglecomfort I simply know what the actor's attitude should be and what he should say. He doesn't, because he can't see the relationship that begins to exist between his body and the other things in the scene. Michelangelo Antonioni actorsbodyattitude Violence is not the only means of persuasion. Michelangelo Antonioni persuasionviolencemean When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them. Michelangelo Antonioni spaceusemen I rarely feel the desire to reread a scene the day before the shooting. Sometimes I arrive at the place where the work is to be done and I do not even know what I am going to shoot. This is the system I prefer: to arrive at the moment when shooting is about to begin, absolutely unprepared, virgin. I often ask to be left alone on the spot for fifteen minutes or half an hour and I let my thoughts wander freely. Michelangelo Antonioni donehalfdesire Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance. Michelangelo Antonioni actorsscenepeople 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. Michelangelo Antonioni artistmenideas I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space. Michelangelo Antonioni spacewantcharacter All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks. Michelangelo Antonioni cuttingfightingcharacter That love is a conflict seems to me obvious and natural. There isn't a single worthwhile work in world literature based on love that is only about the conquest of happiness, the effort to arrive at what we call love. It's the struggle that has always interested those who produce works of art - literature, cinema or poetry. Michelangelo Antonioni strugglelove-isart Do you really think a man must be strong, masculine, dominating, and the woman frail, obedient and sensitive? This is a conventional idea. Reality is quite different. Michelangelo Antonioni strongmenreality It's untrue to say the colors I use are not those of reality. They are real: The red I use is red; the green, green; blue, blue; and yellow, yellow. It's a matter of arranging them differently from the way I find them, but they are always real colors. So it's not true that when I tint a road or a wall, they become unreal. They stay real, though colored differently for my scene. Michelangelo Antonioni wallrealblue Life should be taken ironically; otherwise, it becomes a tragedy. Michelangelo Antonioni tragedytakenshould
