Fellini Quotes

I don't like the idea of "understanding" a film. I don't believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn't. If you are moved by it, you don't need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it. ~ Federico Fellini

I wasn't allowed to see movies when I was a child. It was against the religion I was raised in, Fundamentalist Baptist. I didn't go into a commercial movie house until I was a senior in college, and that was on the sly. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that I immersed myself in films. Then, I went to see all the films by Bergman, Fellini, etc. ~ Wes Craven

I think about a Richard Avedon photo series, the kind of faces he gets of real people, which I find so captivating. Fellini was also great in filling his films with this ambiance, this environment, sometimes chaotic and carnival-like, but people's faces were always amazing. ~ Cary Fukunaga

My star was kind of fading towards the end of the '60s and suddenly I got this call from Fellini, who just appeared to kind of love me! ~ Terence Stamp

We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we're faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off. ~ Federico Fellini

Peellaert's comic strips were the literature of intelligence, imagination and romanticism. ~ Federico Fellini

I loved all movies, literally. I certainly loved 'Shane' and 'Roxie Hart.' Later on, when I was less of a kid, I loved 'L'Avventura' and 'Persona' and all Fellini movies and like everybody else I loved John Ford. Then and now, I loved Preston Sturges, maybe above anyone. ~ Mike Nichols

Oh, no. This has "marriage" written all over it. Travis, read my lips: remember that Fellini film with the prostitute who says that every new sunrise makes her a virgin? It doesn't work that way with me. Even the sun thinks I'm a slut. ~ Steve Kluger

Regrets are a waste of time. They're the past crippling you in the present. ~ Federico Fellini

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together. ~ Federico Fellini

Julia edged closer, wondering what kind of vocabulary dogs understood. Frederico Fellini, her cat, was an intellectual and she could talk about books and films to him, as long as it was after he'd been fed, and fed well. She had the vague notion that dogs preferred football and politics. ~ Lisa Marie Rice

Fellini and Bunuel changed my life for me, they are my favourites. If it is true that movies are dreams, both of them, Fellini and Bunuel were shooting in a dream way. ~ Roberto Benigni

Fellini was more in love with breasts than Russ Meyer, more wracked with guilt than Ingmar Bergman, more of a flamboyant showman than Busby Berkeley ... Amarcord seems almost to flow from the camera, as anecdotes will flow from one who has told them often and knows they work. This was the last of his films made for no better reason than Fellini wanted to make it. ~ Roger Ebert

Reality! But what does this word mean? Each has his own reality. I draw upon my personal reality upon the dark side of myself, my unconscious. ~ Federico Fellini

A more miserable life is better...believe me..than an existence protected by an organized society...where everything is calculated....where everything is perfect... ~ Frederico Fellini

Nothing is sadder than laughter; nothing more beautiful, more magnificent, more uplifting and enriching than the terror of deep despair. ~ Federico Fellini

Your life is a Fellini film, lacking only Anita Ekberg with a cat on her head. ~ Camille Paglia

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me. ~ Federico Fellini

You have to live spherically - in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm - and things will come your way. ~ Federico Fellini

I never make moral judgments; I'm not qualified to do so. I am not a censor, a priest, or a politician. ~ Federico Fellini

Fellini belongs to nature. ~ Roberto Benigni

I was inspired by Maya Deren because she was the first woman filmmaker whose films I saw. I also loved Fellini and Goddard because they were so different from Hollywood films. But when I saw the cinema verite films that were made by Drew Associates with Leacock and Pennebaker I found my passion. ~ Chris Hegedus

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography. ~ Federico Fellini

The picture is in your head, in your imagination, everything. ~ Federico Fellini

With 'Brick' there was the Dashiell Hammett influence, and with 'Brothers Bloom' there was a really strong Fellini influence - both those movies wore that on their sleeve. ~ Rian Johnson

My favorite favorites are people like Bunuel, Fellini and Charlie Chaplin. ~ Alex Winter

Never trust a woman who doesn't like to eat. She is probably lousy in bed. ~ Federico Fellini

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet ... maybe we could understand something. ~ Federico Fellini

An artist is a provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one. It's this in-between that I'm calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one. That is the realm of the artist. ~ Federico Fellini

It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman. ~ Federico Fellini

Fate is written in the face. ~ Federico Fellini

New York's like a boxing match. In Hollywood, it's like a Fellini movie or something. ~ John Cusack

Rome is a very loony city in every respect. One needs but spend an hour or two there to realize that Fellini makes documentaries. ~ Fran Lebowitz

I spent my life trying to cure myself of my education. ~ Federico Fellini

'La Notte' is my favorite of the Antonioni pictures and my favorite work of the master cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, who also shot '8 1/2' for Fellini. ~ Jake Paltrow

There is no such thing as a good paparazzo. A good paparazzo, that's a paparazzo who has had his camera broken. In fact, they are bandits, thieves of photography. (Statement after photographs were published showing Jackie Onassis sunbathing nude.) ~ Federico Fellini

Georgian film is a completely unique phenomenon, vivid, philosophically inspiring, very wise, childlike. There is everything that can make me cry and I ought to say that it (my crying) is not an easy thing. ~ Federico Fellini

What I want to do is make films that astonish people, that astound people, and I hope you want to do that too. It's easy to make money. It's easy to make films like everybody else. But to make films that explode like grenades in people's heads and leave shrapnel for the rest of their lives is a very important thing. That's what the great filmmakers did for me. I've got images from Fellini, from Bergman, from Kurowsawa, from Bunuel, all stuck in my brain. ~ Terry Gilliam

Nietzsche claimed that his genius was in his nostrils and I think that is a very excellent place for it to be. ~ Federico Fellini

Most movies shot in Italian don't even bother to record the sound. In fact, sometimes when Fellini works, he doesn't even know what the dialogue is going to be, and he simply has his characters count from 1 to 10, knowing he will loop in their dialogue later. ~ Sean Connery

I see wonderful films by Bertolucci, Visconti, and Fellini. ~ Vincente Minnelli

It was I who made Fellini famous, not the other way around. ~ Anita Ekberg

In the neighborhood around Waseda, there were all these movie theaters, so every morning I left the house and watched movies instead of going to class. The experience of encountering films then is one of my greatest memories. Before that I'd never paid any attention to directors, but there I was taking a crash course in Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, Truffaut, Renoir, Fellini. Because I've always been naturally a more introspective person, I was more interested in becoming a screenwriter than a director. ~ Hirokazu Koreeda

My mother is like a character who escaped from the set of a Fellini film. She's a whole performing universe of her own. Activists would run a mile from her because they could not deal with what she is. ~ Arundhati Roy

The films I liked were European films-Fellini, Antonioni, Truffaut. ~ Tobe Hooper

The greatest danger for artists is total freedom. ~ Federico Fellini

For me, Fellini was like a watermelon. It is there. A watermelon cannot die. ~ Roberto Benigni

I think we're [me and my son] different. He plans, organizes and intellectualizes more than I do. It wasn't until I worked with Federico Fellini that I understood what my problem was. ~ Donald Sutherland

I always direct the same film. I can't distinguish one from the other. ~ Federico Fellini

One of the greatest handicaps is to fear a mistake. You have stopped yourself. You have to move freely into the arena, not just to wait for the perfect situation, the perfect moment ... If you have to make a mistake, it's better to make a mistake of action than one of inaction. If I had the opportunity again, I would take chances. ~ Federico Fellini

One doesn't remember one's own life chronologically, the way it happened, what was most important, or even what seemed most important. We are not in control of our memories. One doesn't own one's memories. One is owned by them. ~ Federico Fellini

If you're not [Federico] Fellini you might make something very vulgar. Animation made it possible to maintain unity with all these different narratives. ~ Marjane Satrapi

Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know. ~ Federico Fellini

McKee's a genius. And hillarious. You'll like him, too, Charles. He's all for originality, just like you.
He says that we have to realize that we all write in a genre and we must find our originality within that genre.
As it turns out, there hasn't been a new genre since Fellini invented the mockumentary.

My genre's thriller, what's yours? ~ Donald Kaufman

Marriage is a tyranny, a mortification of man's natural instincts. Man needs a multiplicity of relationships. ~ Federico Fellini

Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness. ~ Ingmar Bergman

Our minds can shape the way a thing will be because we act according to our expectations. ~ Federico Fellini

Happiness is simply a temporary condition that proceeds unhappiness. Fortunately for us, it works the other way around as well. But it's all a part of the carnival, isn't it? ~ Federico Fellini

The only place where you can be a dictator and still be loved is on the movie set ~ Federico Fellini

Going to the cinema is like returning to the womb; you sit there still and meditative in the darkness, waiting for life to appear on the screen. One should go to the cinema with the innocence of a fetus ~ Federico Fellini

I was influenced by European movies, old Fellini, old Kurosawa - any sort of foreign film. ~ Ted Demme

As I don't consider myself exceptional, but simply a storyteller, each of my stories is really a period of my life. Deep down I feel that criticism of my work-which is the most sincere and authentic vision of myself-is unsuitable and immodest, whether it is favorable or unfavorable. ~ Federico Fellini

When I'm on stage, it's really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It's funny how different it looks and how it's happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I'm going to get a bagel. ~ Steven Wright

Loneliness is a heavy burden, but i'd rather be alone than make compromises. ~ Federico Fellini

Nothing is more honest than a dream. ~ Federico Fellini

Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real. ~ Federico Fellini

I have a profound admiration for Fellini. I met him lately and he's just fantastic. I feel very close to him even though he's very Italian. But his films could have been made in every country. When I say, I feel close to him, then also because we're both born on January 20th. ~ David Lynch

Experience is what you get while looking for something else. ~ Federico Fellini

I like so many different directors: Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Woody Allen and the greats like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky and among current filmmakers von Trier, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I remember, the first time I saw a [Andrei] Tarkovsky film, I was shocked by it. I didn't know what to do. I was fascinated, because suddenly I realized that film could have so many more layers to it than what I had imagined before. Then others, like Kurosawa and Fellini, were like a new discovery for me, another country. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

According to the doctors, I'm only suffering from a light form of premature baldness. ~ Federico Fellini

No matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing. ~ Federico Fellini

Put yourself into life and never lose your openness, your childish enthusiasm throughout the journey that is life, and things will come your way. ~ Federico Fellini

If I hadn't refused Ken Russell, Fellini and Spielberg and made their movies when they asked me, my life would be no different. It is not my fault that I accepted one movie and turned down another. I don't see any point in defending myself, either. ~ Klaus Kinski

I realized that a lot of the great directors that I admire from [Ingmar] Bergman to [Fredrico] Fellini re always shooting, then going into the editing room, and shooting again. ~ Marc Forster

Every time I start a picture ... I feel the same fear, the same self-doubts ... and I have only one source on which I can draw, because it comes from within me. ~ Federico Fellini

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world. ~ Federico Fellini

There are beauty icons that I can never be like, sorta like a Gena Rowlands - I'll never have that look. I love Giulietta Masina, the great Fellini actress. But I'm probably more Seymour Cassel. Or somewhere between Lou Reed and Nora Ephron? ~ Natasha Lyonne

A different language is a different vision of life. ~ Federico Fellini

You see me in my most virile moment when you see me doing what I do. When I am directing, a special energy comes upon me ... It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive. It is like having sex. ~ Federico Fellini

When I do things without any explanation, but just with spontaneity ... I can be sure that I am right. ~ Federico Fellini

To evoke the classic period of Italian cinema in a little film seemed like a great, fun thing to do. I had relations to that period. I had known Fellini and I had known Antonioni. I had made a movie with Antonioni and I had visited Fellini in his studios. So, it seemed like something worthwhile doing. You bring yourself to that mythical cinema. ~ Wim Wenders

I'm definitely a big believer in the notion that a heightened style can get you closer to an authentic human experience than so-called realism on film. There are films I love that have kind of a muted or realistic style, but for me on any given day I have more moments during the course of a day that feel like a Fellini movie than I do a Cassavettes movie. ~ Rian Johnson

Only the early Fitzgerald was great. Then came an orgy of brutal realism ~ Federico Fellini

Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream. ~ Federico Fellini

Directors who have inspired me include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola and Ernst Lubitsch. In art school, I studied painters like Edward Hopper, who used urban motifs, Franz Kafka is my favorite novelist. My approach to film stems from my art background, as I go beyond the story to the sub-conscious mood created by sound and images. ~ David Lynch

I could spend my whole life photographing circuses. They combine everything I'm interested in - they're ironic, poetic, and corny at the same time. There's also something about a circus that's magical, sentimental, and almost tragic, like a Fellini film. ~ Mary Ellen Mark

Martin Scorcese is probably America's greatest living director, and while he is not a titan like John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock or Federico Fellini, he is certainly consistently more interesting than Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma, Francis Ford Coppola or Woody Allen. Even a failure like Gangs of New York or a curiosity like The Aviator is more interesting and ambitious than Munich, The Black Dahlia or Scoop. ~ Joe Queenan

A face, he believes, is a piece of sculpture that has taken a lifetime to mold, so it tells more than any actor's technique possibly could. I've watched Fellini work, and he did ~ Elia Kazan