List of Michel Hazanavicius Quotes

I Think The Writer Is Always The Creator, Because He's Starting With Nothing, But The Actor Comes In And Gives Flesh And Blood.

First Of All, I Had The Desire For That Format [silent Movie], And Then When I Was Talking To People, I Felt That People Needed Justification. Why Are You Doing A Silent Movie? Is It Just For Your Own Pleasure? I Felt It Was Not Enough For Them So I Realized I Have To Choose The Subject That Will Make Things Easier For Them And To Tell The Story Of A Silent Actor Makes Sense For Doing A Silent Movie.

I Went To Hollywood. I Put The Action In Hollywood. I Watched A Lot Of Movies, Maybe 100 Or Something Close To That. I Have Tons Of Dvds Now At Home. I Don't Know What To Do With Them Because They're Not Useful Anymore. My Kids Never Watched Them. I Read A Lot Of Autobiographies, Listened To A Lot Of Music By Classical Era Composers Like Franz Waxman, Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman And Leonard Bernstein. I Listened To Only That Kind Of Music The Entire Time I Was Writing, Even At Home.

There Are Two Kinds Of Audiences. There's The Ones Who Were In The Theaters, And The Ones Who Are Outside And We Want Them To Come Inside The Theater. And, It's Not The Same.

Finally, You're Right About One Point, Your Entire Way Of Thinking Is Predicted By What You're Immersed In So You Know You Won't Make A Bad Decision. You Can Make A Bad Decision But It's Still In The Good Sphere Normally If You Work Well. You're Prepared To Face A Crew Who Wants To Know Everything And Poses A Hundred Questions A Minute, Because You Know You Have Good Reflexes And Can Respond Very Quickly.

I Watched A Lot Of Movies From All Over The World. The Russians Were Very Good At Editing. They Were Specialists In Editing. The Man With A Camera, If You Know That Movie, Is Incredible. I Still Don't Understand How It Works. It's A Movie With No Script, No Actors And Still It Works. It's Really Good. It's Really About Editing.

The Germans Were Much More Graphical. The Expressionism Is Much More Than Cinema. It Was A Movement With Artists, Painters, Music And Architecture, So It's Really Graphic And Visual. And The French Were Something Else.

I Chose The American Ones, More Or Less The Last Five Years Of The Silent Era, Because Those Are The Ones That Aged The Best In The Way They Tell The Story. One, It's About Human Beings With Context. It's A Very Classical Story With Feelings, With Laughter, Melodrama And It Really Works, The Good Ones - Murnau's American Movies, John Ford's Four Sons, King Vidor's The Crowd, Or The (josef) Von Sternberg Movies. You Can Watch It Now And It Still Works. I Mean They Are Really, Really Good Pieces So This Is Where I Tried To Work.

Robert Deniro, Who May Be The Greatest Living Actor, Usually Acts In A Way Which Is Very Stone-faced, Like Steve Mcqueen. For Example, Steve Mcqueen, If You Cut The Sound, You Don't Know What He's Acting Really. He Gives To The Lines, To The Text, Something Very Special, And He's Very Good. He Was A Great Actor. But, To Do A Silent Movie, You Have To Have More Expressive Actors.

I Guess All The Directors In France Are Influenced By Hitchcock, Because He's The Perfect Visual Director, In My Eyes.

Usually, When You Do A Period Movie, You Just Recreate What You Are Shooting. You Don't Recreate The Way You Shoot It. I Think I Did The Same Thing Here As I Did In The Oss 117 Movies. I Recreated The Way To Shoot That Period, Because To Me, Like What I Was Saying About The Steadicam, There's No Sense To Do A Steadicam Shot In The 1920s Because You Have Never Seen The '20s Like That. You Can't Believe There Was A Steadicam In The 1920s. I Believe It's A Continuation Of The Oss 117 In A Way But Without The Irony.

I Think There's Something In Common With The Oss 117 Movies. The Big Difference Is There's No Irony In This One. It's Not Parody. I Tried To Make It Very Simple. It's A Simple Story, But To Be Simple, It's Very Complex In The Way It's Done.