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Michelangelo Antonioni Biography

Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007), was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer. Best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents" — L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962), as well as the English-language Blowup (1966), Antonioni "redefined the concept of narrative cinema" and challenged traditional approaches to storytelling, realism, drama, and the world at large. He produced "enigmatic and intricate mood pieces" and rejected action in favor of contemplation, focusing on image and design over character and story. His films defined a "cinema of possibilities".

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Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes

Innovation comes spontaneously. I don't know if I've done anything new. If I have, it's just because I had begun to feel for some time that I couldn't stand certain films, certain modes, certain ways of telling a story, certain tricks of plot development, all of it predictable and useless.

Certain, Innovation, Know, Plot, Stories, Ways

Method actors are absolutely terrible. They want to direct themselves, and it's a disaster.

Actors, Want, Disaster, Method, Direct, Terrible

After you've learned two or three basic rules of cinema grammar, you can do what you like - including breaking those rules.

Cinema, Including, Like, Three, Two

I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about.

Cutting, Film, Ideas, Intention, Take, Thinking

I would throw out the sense of nation, "good breeding," certain forms and ceremonies that govern relationships - perhaps even jealousy. We're not aware of all of them yet, though we suffer from them. And they mislead us not only about ethics but also about aesthetics.

Ethics, Govern, Mislead, Mislead Us, Sense, Suffering

Fitzgerald said a very interesting thing in his diary; that human life proceeds from the good to the less good - that is, it's always worse as you go on. That's true.

Diaries, Goes On, Good, Interesting, Life

Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.

Emptiness, Look, Looks, Understand

I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why.

Believe, Essential, Future, People, Thinking, Truth

When I'm sure I have a story, I call my collaborators and we begin to discuss it. And we conduct studies of certain subjects to make sure of our terrain. Then, finally, in the last month or two, I write the story.

Begin, Make, Stories, Story, Two, Writing

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.

Longer, Meaning, Men, Reconciled, Space, Use

The struggle for life is not only the material and economic one. Comfort is no protection from anxiety.

Struggle, Anxiety, Comfort, Economic, Material

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.

Differences, Difficult, Doe, Film, Know, Mind

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.

Art, Conflict, Love Is, Struggle, Work

Nothing regarding man is ever inhuman. That's why I make films, not iceboxes.

Film, Iceboxes, Inhuman, Make, Men, Nothing

A woman's sex appeal is an inner matter. It stems from her mental make-up, basically. It's an attitude, not just a question of her physical features - that arrogant quality in a woman's femininity. Otherwise, all beautiful women would have sex appeal, which is not so.

Beautiful, Sex, Attitude, Question, Inner

I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.

Future, Imagine, Like, Politician, Sociologists

Monica Vitti is astonishingly mobile. Few actresses have such mobile features. She has her own personal and original way of acting.

Acting, Actresses, Astonishingly, Personal, Way

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.

Idea, Man, Masculine, Men, Reality, Strong

I didn't like university life much at Bologna. The subjects I studied - economics and business administration - didn't interest me. I wanted to make films. I was glad when I was graduated. Yet it's odd; on graduation day, I was overcome with a terrible sadness. I realized that my youth was over and now the struggle had begun.

Administration, Begun, Like, Sadness, Struggle, Youth

My films always leave me unsatisfied, since I've always worked under fairly disastrous conditions economically.

Conditions, Economically, Film, Leave, Leaving Me, Worked

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