I was seduced by the nouvelle vague, because it was really reinventing everything. And the Italian cinema that one would see in the theaters in the late ’50s, early ’60s was Italian comedy, Italian style, which, to me, was like the end of neo-realism.
BERNARDO BERTOLUCCISometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late.
More Bernardo Bertolucci Quotes
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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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There’s no more film; now everything’s digital. I welcome this. It’s fantastic for me to have a new chance.
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A name? Oh, Jesus Christ. Ah, God, I’ve been called by a million names all my life. I don’t want a name. I’m better off with a grunt or a groan for a name.
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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 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 am still against any kind of censorship. It’s a subject in my life that has been very important.
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Young people now don’t care for politics. It isn’t present in life as it used to be. And increasingly I like films which reflect present-day reality.
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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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What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution.
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Pornography is not in the hands of the child who discovers his sexuality by masturbating, but in the heart of the adult who slaps him.
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There was a sense of future that was the result of the mixture of politics, cinema, music, the first joints. And the movies were a very important part of that cocktail.
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I think that what I learned then, I didn’t know I was learning. I just knew that I was very privileged to see somebody who was a writer, a great poet, and very smart-faced. Suddenly Pasolini becomes a director, so he has to invent cinema.
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Every film I have made has corresponded to a very special moment of my life. I like to think that if someone wanted to reconstruct the story of my life, they can just see my movies and know what I have been through.
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What I was talking about was, of course, very autobiographical – ’68 was the moment when all the young people were incredibly excited, because when we were going to sleep, we knew we would wake up not tomorrow, but in the future.
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This is something that I dream about: to live films, to arrive at the point at which one can live for films, can think cinematographically, eat cinematographically, sleep cinematographically, as a poet, a painter, lives, eats, sleeps painting.
BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI