Top 100 Art Film Quotes
#1. What if it's an art film with subtitles?" "Then I'll suffer in silence.
Nora Roberts
#2. The worst thing you can do is make a cult movie. That means you got three great reviews and nobody went. An art film means it got a lot of good reviews and nobody went. There is no such thing as a counter culture now. What used to be considered that is commercial now.
John Waters
#3. Art, film, fashion, music are all going on and interacting simultaneously. And L.A. is very receptive to that fusion.
Jeffrey Deitch
#4. I would trade many an art-film classic for the final exchange between Redford and Streisand in front of the Plaza.
Molly Haskell
#5. I think the art film, or the auteur-driven film - and not only foreign, but domestic films following that path - can get a small share of the box office. And I think that small share may open up a little bit.
Roger Corman
#6. I don't make a division between an art film and commercial art.
Joe Wright
#7. There is always something I gain from watching a movie, whether it's a silly romantic comedy or an art film.
Gia Coppola
#8. I would like to use stories as a springboard for children to make their own creative responses. I would like to encourage them to express themselves using music, art, film or whatever, and upload it to a website having been inspired by particular stories.
Malorie Blackman
#9. People talk about making art films - experimental films. I can make an art film every day of the week. Nothing to it. What's difficult is to combine a commercial film with art.
Carlo Ponti
#10. MANY MANAGE TO SEPARATE THEIR LIFE FROM THEIR FILMS. THEY LIVE ONE WAY AND EXPRESS OTHER IDEAS IN THEIR WORKS. THEY ARE ABLE TO SPLIT THEIR CONSCIENCE. I CAN'T. TO ME CINEMA IS NOT JUST MY JOB: IT'S MY LIFE, AND EACH FILM IS AN ACT OF MY LIFE.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#11. It is an example of what films can do, how they can slip past your defenses and really break your heart.
David Gilmour
#12. Fear is a problem with film music and films; people want to be conventional, and there's more commercialism today. If you are not daring in your art, you're bankrupt.
Alex North
#13. Poetry is what you can't translate. Art is what you can't define. Film is what you can't explain. But we're going to try, anyway.
James Monaco
#14. Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.
Francois Truffaut
#15. Like all art forms, film is a media as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; the only difference is that war destroys and film inspires.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#16. I took courses at USC in film editing and art direction and photography when I was still in high school.
Ray Harryhausen
#17. Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest.
Jean Douchet
#18. Every single art form is involved in film, in a way.
Sydney Pollack
#19. I wanted to do dance with the same seriousness as art was done and acknowledged, not with the entertainment factor that is always connected to theater and film.
Tino Sehgal
#20. Over the years, I have been subjected to many indignities, all for the sake of Art. If I ever catch him, I'm going to kill the guy.
Bob Hope
#21. I love art, I love music. I can listen to Stockhausen and a very experimental, avant-garde approach, and I can listen to Beethoven and have a more classical, traditional approach. Why not be able to do that with film performance?
Nicolas Cage
#22. Independent film is almost nonexistent right now, because all the distributers that used to love to put out these little art films are all out of business right now, because it costs so much to open a movie.
Ron Perlman
#23. Being a systematic theologian allows me to indulge all my interests - in literature, film, art, music - by relating them all to God.
Kevin Vanhoozer
#24. [My work] looks very cinematic because it's not abstract video art. It's sometimes very narrative and since I play with film grammar in my video work, making a feature film was almost the same challenge.
Nicolas Provost
#25. First of all, what in this world does not revolve around money? But money is a big part of film, unlike a lot of other art forms.
Spike Lee
#26. Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.
Werner Herzog
#27. Most great products have been made over the dead bodies of experts.
David Brown
#28. I think that music and art and film, at their best, can connect with something that is eternal in human beings, that might not have so many labels on it, something that's ultimately universal and that may just be a feeling.
Tunde Adebimpe
#29. My first film was a movie shot in 1974. I was 18 on that movie set. It was called 'Big Bad Mama.' I turned 19 on the next movie I worked on, which was a black 'Blazing Saddles.' I worked in the art department. It was called 'Darktown Strutters.'
Bill Paxton
#30. In our film profession you may have Gable's looks, Tracy's art, Marlene's legs or Liz's violet eyes, but they don't mean a thing without that swinging thing called courage.
Frank Capra
#31. Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you'll find it. It's there in paintings of photographs, photographs of advertising, sculpture with ready-made objects, videos using already-existing film.
Jerry Saltz
#32. The demarcation between an art house film and an entertainer has blurred, only because a larger section of the audience has accepted such realistic films.
Arjun Rampal
#33. Completing a piece of art and using all of the elements of making a film, was satisfying, for sure.
Robert Stromberg
#34. Acting is secondary - I don't feel like it's going to stick around because it's not something I want to do forever. My art has always been my top priority and I have far more experience in that field than I do in film.
Jemima Kirke
#35. I started the film [Hostel Part II]with the girls in an art class and there's a nude male model. People think that women are objectified, well here you go! Here's a man being objectivized but now it's under the guise of art.
Eli Roth
#36. Film is an incredible way to express yourself and your vision, as is fashion, but you have to make sure [to] be confident and honest and true to yourself and say something that means something, because that is really the point of any art.
Tom Ford
#37. When art in general, and film in particular, succeeds is when it pulls you away onto a voyage. Then it's a good film.
Philippe Petit
#38. I got exposed to art-house cinema and foreign films. I was from L.A., so it was a film culture that I didn't know about.
Lisa Cholodenko
#39. If you consider film an art form, as some people do, then the Western would be a truly American art form, much as jazz is.
Clint Eastwood
#40. The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.
Keanu Reeves
#41. If you're an artist, it's OK to put your money into your art. The advantage, in hindsight, is that you become the film, and the film becomes you; you breathe it.
Anton Corbijn
#42. I really appreciate anyone trying to inject art into mainstream film.
Mark Mothersbaugh
#43. Film is a very young art that is still evolving. Soon, we shall reach a balance between content and technology.
Catherine Deneuve
#44. All movies are pure process. A commercial movie isn't less process than an art movie. You can't make your decisions about a film on the basis of, 'Is it important enough? Is it serious enough?' It's either alive or it's not for me. If it's alive, I want to do it.
Mike Nichols
#45. Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.
Werner Herzog
#46. Blue jeans have gone around the world. But that's a product. We market blue jeans better, just as we market film better. But you can't tell me that if America didn't exist, the culture of movies wouldn't exist. It's not a distinctly American art form.
David Simon
#47. A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.
Ivan Klima
#48. I've had the good fortune of studying the 17th-century art of Amsterdam in preparation for a film.
Jack O'Connell
#49. Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.
Ingmar Bergman
#50. But I reckon that this realm of higher needs, of something more than just forgetting about everyday life, of mere recreation, this realm of needs has been clearly neglected by us.
Krzysztof Kieslowski
#51. In any art movement, the art has to move into a new phase - a filmmaker has a desire to make a film that is not like a previous film.
Norman McLaren
#52. When you're actually making a film, it's just people on your back all the time wanting stuff and you're constantly having to it deal with them. It's probably the most time consuming of all the arts, but I do love it because it is a great mix of visual art and music and writing.
Taika Waititi
#53. My wife Victoria Harwood was art director on 'Far North,' and she had designed my student film, 'The Sheep Thief.'
Asif Kapadia
#54. I'm not a film snob at all. I much prefer a really good Hollywood blockbuster than a thought-provoking art house movie because entertainment is sort of where it's at.
Ricky Gervais
#55. Film is probably the medium best suited to reach the most people - the visual, the aural, the limbic, the intellectual: it captures all these parts of our mind and soul. No other art form comes close.
Peter Landesman
#56. I wanted to study film at an art school - I loved the idea of being surrounded by designers and artists. We were encouraged to be experimental.
Asif Kapadia
#57. I've always wanted to introduce hip-hop filmmaking to film. There's hip-hop art, dance, music, but there really isn't hip-hop film. So I was trying to do that.
Darren Aronofsky
#58. I have never been sorry to see my sets being struck, provided they are well photographed. They're not works of art but part of making a film.
Ken Adam
#59. Norway is a small country, about half the size of Sweden, but it has a very good film climate because they have municipal cinemas, so even in the smallest towns you have a cinema that shows art house films from all over the world.
Stellan Skarsgard
#60. The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
Walter Benjamin
#61. There are always forces at work in a society, which are really forces of censorship - either religious bodies or zealots who are always putting pressure on things, whether it's books or art or film.
John Boorman
#62. I didn't want to be an actress. I wasn't trying to be in film or an art gallery for me.
Yasmine Al Masri
#63. The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn't trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.
Ethan Hawke
#64. Asically, we got to know other and openly trade stories, and had some time to prep. As far as the 'going too far' thing, the great thing about film art is that you can go too far, and with multiple takes nobody has to see it.
Luke Kirby
#66. I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.
Jeff Bridges
#67. Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.
Kenneth Lonergan
#68. Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!
Gene Wilder
#69. I think that when a film does its job, it poses questions rather than gives answers. It should act as a frustrating counselor who, at your bidding for advice, says, 'What do you think?' I think that's some of what the culture critic Greg Tate meant by art leaving a 'metaphysical stain.'
Aunjanue Ellis
#70. Like all art, nonfiction film should invite, seduce, or force us to confront the most difficult, frightening or mysterious aspects of what it means to be human.
Joshua Oppenheimer
#71. Film has become a marketed commodity, and the opportunities and audiences for art cinema have grown smaller. There is a general downturn in cultural literacy, perhaps because of television.
Roger Ebert
#72. The dichotomy between art and industry is totally dysfunctional in terms of film.
Ann Macbeth
#73. Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire.
Slavoj Zizek
#74. Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited - that has music and rhythm and time.
Frank Ocean
#75. The lasting and ultimately most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection for it they have.
Stanley Kubrick
#76. There was once a time when art history and film were basically the same medium, but art history is frozen in late-19th-century technology that has survived into the early 21st century.
Robert Nelson
#77. To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message.
Chester Elijah Branch
#78. I mean, certainly it's the single biggest event, I think, in terms of popular entertainment, or art even, if you say that, of the 20th Century. It's been film. It's the 20th Century's real art form.
Sydney Pollack
#79. I've been a film geek since I was a little kid and to start with an idea and then get a stack of papers with words on it called a script, then storyboarding the art, and you sit with these guys and now all the sudden it's a movie, and to see fans reactions to it when you put it out.
Thomas Tull
#80. Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.
Ansel Adams
#81. Focus should be on the art of film, not on the business of film.
Winona Ryder
#82. The tensions are always based on financial resources. Something like film is very problematic because it is viewed as an art form and also as an industry with a pure commercial base.
Ann Macbeth
#83. Film photography will always be superior to digital - because no matter how many lasers and instant buttons and HD pixels you've got, a human being can take a photograph with much more integrity and meaning than one a built-in robot took.
Rebecca McNutt
#84. A film that is a true work of art transcends theatre and heartwarmingly changes lives.
A.D. Posey
#85. In LA I was watching At the Movies with Ebert and Roper, it was, nice to see them differentiate between the subject matter and the art form of making the film, and they both gave it thumbs up, and I was kind of pleased at their honesty as far as reviewers go.
Michael Berryman
#86. Lots of things inspire me. My friends and my family, obviously. I really like to travel, so very inspired by traveling and meeting new people along the way. Also, music and the arts, like film and television. I like to read a lot too; that stuff inspires me.
Jessica McNamee
#87. A world that won't forget is a world drowned in its not forgetting. Do we want a world full of unedited memory? To be human is to be finite.
Tacita Dean
#88. I think the one that's going to be the hardest to make into a film is the one that's probably going to be made into a film, which is 'The Art of Racing in the Rain.' I mean, it's narrated by a dog. How do you do that? But hopefully we'll get to see.
Garth Stein
#89. So much of art-making is about reducing things to the essentials, so I don't feel particularly crippled by this. I don't want it to look natural because then I would be making a documentary film.
Jenny Holzer
#90. I think the arts should get big support, but my country has a lot of needs more important than film. Medication, education, food ... The poverty is overwhelming. There are simply more important things to be attended to.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#91. Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.
Pauline Kael
#92. People gravitate occasionally to the brilliantly made art low budget films, which is maybe one out of every five hundred low budget films made.
Roger Corman
#93. I've learnt so much from every film and every director - a new perspective, a greater appreciation of the art.
Sally Menke
#94. I mean, certainly writing, painting, photography, dance, architecture, there is an aspect of almost every art form that is useful and that merges into film in some way.
Sydney Pollack
#95. As far as I have been able to understand, the Japanese seem to keep things close to the vest. Friendly but remote and polite to the point of being invisible. It is in the music, literature, film and art that the Japanese really seem to express themselves.
Henry Rollins
#96. Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It's another part of the twentieth-century mind. It's the world seen from inside. We've come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself.
Don DeLillo
#97. The art of cinema begins with scraping the chewing gum off the seats.
Theodore Roszak
#98. Whereas painting is a more rarefied art form, with a limited audience, I recognized film as this extraordinary social tool that could reach tremendous numbers of people.
Kathryn Bigelow
#100. Mr. Cooper said to me that he had an idea for a film in mind. The only thing he'd tell me was that I was going to have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood. Naturally, I thought of Clark Gable.
Fay Wray
