- [on James Cameron] Cameron isn't evil, he's not an asshole like Spielberg. He wants to be the new De Mille. Unfortunately, he can't direct his way out of a paper bag.
- [on All About Eve (1950)] I still think that Eve is a failed Broadway piece and that it's not for nothing that he [Joseph L. Mankiewicz] left after the first scene of [Jean] Cocteau's Monstres sacrés (which by the way is not a good Cocteau film) because as I see it, the first scene is so powerful that one cannot write the ending or, if one does, one is doomed to churn out a scenario à la Bernstein. Either one drops the subject, or one ends up with something as bad as the third act of Monstres sacrés or the final scenes between [George] Sanders and Anne Baxter, of which I have a horrific memory. The truth is, I really liked Mankiewicz's films from the 50s, and when I saw some of them again, it was maybe in passionate circumstances ... I know that was the case for Eve.
- [on television] I have no relation with television. It's not a willed refusal. First, because I'm never at home; there too, it's a question of lifestyle. I have on occasion seen films on television at friends' homes, and since I'm not used to it, I've always had the impression that I was not watching the film, that I was seeing something else, a reflection . . . It was not a real connection! I agree with what [Jean] Eustache says, television is great for a second viewing, but not for discovering a film. It's a bit like seeing a film again on the editing table. And when I speak with people who've seen on television a film I saw earlier on the screen, I always have the impression that they haven't seen quite the same film, but maybe that's wrong.
- People who go to, say, one film every two weeks and tell themselves, "I will see the great films, but not the others, not the commercial movies," I think those people have no chance of really seeing cinema. I think that cinema is only accessible to those who accept that they must consume the "mainstream." On the other hand, the consumers of mainstream cinema who reject [Marguerite] Duras, [Robert] Bresson, [Jean-Marie] Straub or [Werner] Schroeter, are also people who refuse cinema. That said, it's a question of lifestyle: there are those whose daily schedule includes two hours to watch a movie, others who prefer to read, or listen to music.
- [on Đêm Của Kẻ Đi Săn (1955)]The most seductive one-shot in the history of movies. What can you say? It's the greatest amateur film ever made.
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