Bernardo Bertolucci Quotes

I don't see my movies. I think it's healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I'm afraid to be disappointed.

For American filmmakers, the Oscars is like a mystic thing. For me, it was being in a mirror of my dreams when I was dreaming of Hollywood when I was an adolescent.

If you mention any ideological thing about shooting 'Last Tango in Paris,' I was thinking I was doing a political film.

Pornography is not in the hands of the child who discovers his sexuality by masturbating, but in the heart of the adult who slaps him.

Although some people call me anti-feminist, I know I wasn't because Germaine Greer supported me.

I think that I used to love Hollywood movies. I remember great phases and moments. But, unfortunately, now is not the moment.

Commuting in a wheelchair is not easy. I live in a very old part of Rome. These cobbles everywhere ... terrible! In London, it is the same. Every pavement is uneven.

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.

English dialogues are always just what you need and nothing more - like something out of Hemingway. In Italian and in French, dialogues are always theatrical, literary. You can do more with it.

I lived in a kind of dream of communism.

I make movies in order to make things understood, not to be shocking.

I like being able to see an innocence in people. I see a lot of beauty in youth. Young people are in progress. Their faces and bodies and minds are constantly changing. It's exciting to capture that on film.

The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life.

This is something that I dream about: to live films, to arrive at the point at which one can live for films, can think cinematographically, eat cinematographically, sleep cinematographically, as a poet, a painter, lives, eats, sleeps painting.

What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution. I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. 'The Dreamers' was a total homage to cinema and that love for it.

I am in love with the idea of doing a movie in 3D. I think 3D would be great in a kind of realistic normal story without throwing objects to the camera, but using the 3D on the emotions in an intimate story.

I don't see my movies. When you ask me about one of my movies, it just goes in my memory because maybe sometimes I confuse one for another. I think all movies are like sequences, which is the body of my work.

Sometimes I think that I understand my movies after I make them. Really. I go very often off of instinct.

You know, in ten years you're gonna be playing soccer with your tits, what do you think of that?

I saw 'Avatar' and liked it very much. It was a great achievement.

Sometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late.

I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important.

As a loyal believer in the Auteur Theory I first felt editing was but the logical consequence of the way in which one shoots. But, what I learned is that it is actually another writing.

I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks.

I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those.

I think politics is a higher build in life. You know? If you diffuse under normal, common sense of a story, you make it political. If you choose a conventional way for a story, or refuse to use the conventional way, you make it political.

I wanted to have a reaction from the audience. I wanted to be able to talk to somebody, and not be talking just to myself. That's when I did 'The Conformist,' 'Last Tango in Paris,' etc. And I found it was incredibly rewarding, something new.

Every film I have made has corresponded to a very special moment of my life. I like to think that if someone wanted to reconstruct the story of my life, they can just see my movies and know what I have been through.

There's no more film; now everything's digital. I welcome this. It's fantastic for me to have a new chance.

New York has always embraced me.

I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.

I like that 3D is based on the fact that you look with two eyes, so two cameras imitate that.

The conformist understands that the reason of his desperate look for conformism is that he realises he is different and that he never accepted his difference.

Having no children had been a kind of choice up to the moment when, from a choice, it became a sadness.