Film Directing Quotes:

In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.

- Alfred Hitchcock

source: "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Film Directing, Directors, Documentary Films, Film Directors, Directing Film

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

- Alfred Hitchcock

source: Francois Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Helen G. Scott (1985). “Hitchcock”, p.222, Simon and Schuster

topic: Eye, Film Directing, People, Film Directors, Directing Film

The dynamics of film directing and fashion design - in the ways that I've done it - were not dissimilar.

- Tom Ford

topic: Fashion, Film Directing, Design

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

- Martin Scorsese

source: FaceBook post by Martin Scorsese from Jul 08, 2013

topic: Movie, Gambling, Cinema, Directing Film, Movie Director

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

- Stanley Kubrick

source: Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

topic: Movie, Feelings, Fiction, Independent Filmmaking, Film Directors

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

- Orson Welles

source: 1958 'Un ruban de reves' in L'Express, 5 Jun. Reprinted in English in International Film Annual, no.2.

topic: Movie, Eye, Cameras, Directing Film, Film Directing

A Director Makes Only One Movie in His Life. Then He Breaks It Into Pieces and Makes It Again.

- Jean Renoir

source: Quoted in Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (1993)

topic: Directors, Pieces, Break, Film Directors, Directing Film

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

- Stanley Kubrick

source: Quoted in Halliwell's Filmgoer's and Video Viewer's Companion (1999).

topic: Film Directors, Directing Film, Film Directing

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

source: "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye". "Sight & Sound" Magazine, June 1991.

topic: Dream, Art, Dark, Film Directors, Dark Room

With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. That is what makes a real movie. The script must be something that has the power to do this.

- Akira Kurosawa

topic: Real, Fire, Expression, Cinematic, Film Directing

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.

- Ingmar Bergman

source: "The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography". Book by Ingmar Bergman, translated by Joan Tate, 1988.

topic: Art, Twilight, Soul, Film Directors, Movie Director

Drumming is like film directing. You build a framework for everyone to create something together.

- James Genn

topic: Music, Together, Drumming, Film Directing

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

- Billy Wilder

topic: Sycophants, Directors, Midwife, Directing Film, Film Directing

Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied... That's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.

- Akira Kurosawa

topic: Thinking, Long, People, Film Directing

Human beings share the same common problems. A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly.

- Akira Kurosawa

source: Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

topic: Common, Problem, Film, Film Directors, Directing Film

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

- Alfred Hitchcock

topic: Movie, Funny Life, Gambling, Directing Movies, Film Directors

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

- Alfred Hitchcock

topic: Drama, Writing, Life Is Short, Film Directors, Camera Angles

A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.

- Alfred Hitchcock

topic: Movie, Art, Gambling, Movie Theatre, Admission

The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.

- Alfred Hitchcock

source: Quoted in Francois Truffaut Hitchcock (1968).

topic: Successful, Directors, Villain, Film Directors, Directing Film

A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.

- Michael Winner

source: Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

topic: Teamwork, People, Effort, Directing Film, Dilbert

Acting is one element in a film. Directing is sort of the painter using all of those elements - sound and music and camera and putting it all together. And that can be fun and exciting. If you fail, it's incredibly upsetting - much more upsetting than when you're an actor. But when you succeed it's incredibly, incredibly exciting, so I like the risk of it all.

- George Clooney

topic: Fun, Upset, Risk, Film Directing, Sound And Music

People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.

- Steven Spielberg

source: "Science Fiction in Steven Spielberg's Suburbia". Interview with Chris Hodenfield, www.rollingstone.com. January 26, 1978.

topic: Movie, Inspiring, Positivity, Film Directors, Movie Industry

You have many years ahead of you to create the dreams that we can't even imagine dreaming. You have done more for the collective unconscious of this planet than you will ever know.

- Steven Spielberg

topic: Dream, Years, Done, Collective Unconscious, Film Directors

I directed three films and each time [I act] I hope it's the last time so I have time to do my film [directing].

- Mathieu Amalric

topic: Lasts, Three, Film, Film Directing

Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.

- Billy Wilder

topic: Movie, Winning, Awards, Directing Film, Film Directing

I think its a very strange question that I have to defend myself. I don’t feel that. You are all my guests, it’s not the other way around, that’s how I feel.

- Lars von Trier

source: "Von Trier: 'I am the best film director in the world'" by Eugene Hernandez, www.indiewire.com. May 18, 2009.

topic: Movie, Inspiring, Thinking, Film Directing

I teach film directing, inasmuch as you can. Its not really possible to teach film direction, but I sit there as a sort of testimony of experience and know-how, I suppose.

- Stephen Frears

topic: Film, Teach, Testimony, Film Directing

I was a film-directing major at NYU. I'm still not sure why I became a directing major, when I was really an actor and a comedian, but there was something that drew me to doing that.

- Billy Crystal

topic: Nyu, Comedian, Actors, Film Directing