I Don't Know Whether I Am Ever

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Particular Type Of Film Emerged From World War Two, With The Italian Neorealist School. It Was Perfectly Right For Its Time, Which Was As Exceptional As The Reality Around Us. Our Major Interest Focused On That And On How We Could Relate To It. Later, When The Situation Normalized And Post-war Life Returned To What It Had Been In Peacetime, It Became Important To See The Intimate, Interior Consequences Of All That Had Happened.