Top 71 Argento Quotes
#1. Clearly, the works of John Carpenter and Sam Raimi are front and center here. Argento is definitely there. But even stuff like the 'Friday the 13th' movies had quite an influence on me growing up.
Drew Goddard
#2. I'm Dario Argento, and my style is something recognizable I think by the audience.
Dario Argento
#3. You must push everything to the absolute limit or else life will be boring. People will be boring.
Dario Argento
#5. To try and raise a budget for a film that is strictly for adults and both strong and graphic in content is not easy, especially when there is pressure to spend serious money on good special effects.
Dario Argento
#6. Italy to me is like the mean mother. Whatever I do, it's never good enough. People say I'm the queen of Cannes, but in Italy I get turned down for work.
Asia Argento
#7. So I haven't thought about the critics for a long time.
Dario Argento
#8. I wanted something new, the supernatural. The witch, the sorcerer, I love this. I love the films of the witch and sorcerers and magic, its wonderful!
Dario Argento
#9. But no one should have the right to manipulate my films in the first place.
Dario Argento
#10. This is my life - I want to tell stories. There is something huge inside me that pushes me to tell stories, and tell stories for an audience and everybody.
Dario Argento
#11. Shooting movies has changed, and me too - I have changed. And then, every film I do, something in my mind, my soul, changes. My natural change, I change at the same time as the films, I think.
Dario Argento
#12. Vin Diesel is the best kisser in the world, better than anyone else I've ever had. The most attractive thing about Vin is his brain. That's his most attractive muscle.
Asia Argento
#13. It's incredible that they censor films. It's sad.
Dario Argento
#14. Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.
Dario Argento
#15. The Opera was a very cold film, a hopeless and dark film, no hope, no love.
Dario Argento
#16. If you make a film normally it's all right, the distributors are helpful and cooperative. But if you make a film that's a little stange, a little bizarre, then all the time it's a struggle with them.
Dario Argento
#17. Maybe when I stop making movies, I'll understand my work better.
Dario Argento
#18. I'm very interested in portraying homosexual man and woman in my films because I'm interested in their lives and their problems.
Dario Argento
#19. I was very young, and I was on vacation with my family, and there was a retrospective of old films, and one of them was 'The Phantom of the Opera' with Claude Rains that was in color. It was something very important for my career because I began to follow these stories that were morbid.
Dario Argento
#20. No, it's interesting to remake a film for the contemporary audience today. I think it's a good idea; it needs to respect the original idea. Don't just take the title and change everything else.
Dario Argento
#21. In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.
Dario Argento
#22. What you might see as depravity is, to me, just another aspect of the human condition.
Asia Argento
#25. I like to watch many things, especially strange films and something recent, not just the story.
Dario Argento
#26. I'm appreciated more abroad. In America, Japan ... and in the United Kingdom.
Dario Argento
#27. I have nothing in my life besides my work. I am obsessed with it. I leave my house only when I'm forced to.
Asia Argento
#28. I always saw myself as really ugly. My father even told me I was ugly because I would shave my head and look like a boy.
Asia Argento
#29. When I was five. That's when I started to love film.
Dario Argento
#30. The psychiatrists examine you and ask you about your life and work, and then they decide whether your film can be shown or not. It's a horrible experience.
Dario Argento
#31. But you know, as you say, the original versions of my films are getting out there, slowly.
Dario Argento
#32. I wanted to get back to my style of 20 years ago after a long period of exploring horror and fantasy themes.
Dario Argento
#33. Films are dreams. Many, many critics say to me that my films are not good because they are too unbelievable, but this is my style. I tell stories like they are dreams. This is my imagination. For me, it would be impossible to do a film that is so precise, that resembles real life.
Dario Argento
#34. I don't like landscapes. I like cities. Lots of cities. I like buildings. I like streets.
Dario Argento
#35. Most of the time nothing much is required of directors, which is a pity.
Asia Argento
#36. I want to be adopted by the French. I want to go to live in Paris.
Asia Argento
#37. We had many good directors - John Carpenter, Brian De Palma - but things have become polluted by business, money and bad relationships. The success of the horror genre has led to its downfall.
Dario Argento
#38. I tend to be a lazy actress, unless I'm pushed.
Asia Argento
#39. I went through a phase where I thought nostalgia was a bad thing.
Dario Argento
#40. In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you.
Dario Argento
#41. Why did I spend all these years playing boring Europeans? I was made for action movies.
Asia Argento
#42. I remember when I was very young, I had a fever - a long rheumatic fever in bed for four months. And in the days, I stayed alone with the maid. I only had my father's books with me. They were fantasy books about ghosts, and also books by Edgar Allen Poe that made a forever impression on me.
Dario Argento
#44. I've worked with very few directors who've asked of me what I asked of myself.
Asia Argento
#45. I make a film - and once I've made it, everyone comes along and says 'Ah! This is a film that's political, or social', or whatever. But I'm not telling the story that they see. I made a film, told a story, but I wasn't thinking about exactly what it all meant.
Dario Argento
#46. If you don't like my movies, don't watch them.
Dario Argento
#47. Having been a child actor, I remember how directors would trick me to get good performances out of me. I don't think you need to do that.
Asia Argento
#48. I've never gone into analysis. But Freud opened a door, I know.
Dario Argento
#50. When I see a film I've finished, it's like another person made it. Like another mind.
Dario Argento
#51. Every writer, to some extent, writes about himself.
Dario Argento
#52. 'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.
Dario Argento
#53. It irritated me that my fans kept wanting me to retread old ground.
Dario Argento
#54. Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I'm one person and by the time I finish I'm another.
Dario Argento
#55. I used a Luma crane, a wounderful device; it makes the camera able to go anywhere. It was also used on Friday the 13th Part 3.
Dario Argento
#56. I think the camera was always my obsession, the camera movements. Because for me it's the most important thing in the move, the camera, because without the camera, film is just a stage or television - nothing.
Dario Argento
#57. Fear has disappeared. No more fear. In Asia, it is different. They've discovered again the fear and the psychology of the characters. Without psychology, the horror film doesn't exist.
Dario Argento
#58. For a long time, censors have been cutting my works. This makes me so sad, because many times they will tell me, 'Television won't like, so we have to cut, cut, cut!'
Dario Argento
#59. My daughter, Asia, has been in many of my movies. I love working with her. In the beginning, I was not supportive of her being an actress, but now I think she is fantastic.
Dario Argento
#60. Americans are very enthusiastic. We have a new generation of moviegoers who love great horror films. I am a very imaginative man, and for me, it's easy to speak with my dark side. I have very beautiful, interesting nightmares.
Dario Argento
#61. I want to do what I want when I want to do it not be dictated to by audiences.
Dario Argento
#62. People's attitudes about sex aren't healthy anywhere, except maybe in those tribes where they go around naked.
Asia Argento
#63. My mother was a famous photographer for actresses, including Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, and so many. I remember I went to school close to my mother's studio, and for years, I went to the studio after school and just watched how she captured these beauties.
Dario Argento
#64. I like films to have something inside, I don't mean a message, I mean something from the soul.
Dario Argento
#65. Even in the former Soviet Union, they have good copies of my movies.
Dario Argento
#66. The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it's natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous, and I'm afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see what's there, to embrace it. I don't know why, but I'm drawn.
Dario Argento
#67. 'Deep Red' (1975) is my favorite movie. The character David Hemmings plays is very much based on my own personality. It was a very strong film, very brutal, and of course the censors were upset. It was cut by almost an hour in some countries.
Dario Argento
#68. Horror by definition is the emotion of pure revulsion. Terror of the same standard, is that of fearful anticipation.
Dario Argento
#69. I've been lucky enough to have had the luxury of being able to make the picture I've wanted to make each time on my own terms and without compromise.
Dario Argento
#71. I also don't like films that are made just to make money, no this kind of film I don't like.
Dario Argento
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