Michelangelo Antonioni

You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.

When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film.

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance.

Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer.

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.

I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.

When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them.

I don't want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.

I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.