“A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a good movie can make you feel alive again, in contact, not just lost in another city. Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. If somewhere in the Hollywood-entertainment world someone has managed to break through with something that speaks to you, then it isn’t all corruption. The movie doesn’t have to be great; it can be stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance, or the joy in just a good line. An actor’s scowl, a small subversive gesture, a dirty remark that someone tosses off with a mock-innocent face, and the world makes a little bit of sense. Sitting there alone or painfully alone because those with you do not react as you do, you know there must be others perhaps in this very theatre or in this city, surely in other theatres in other cities, now, in the past or future, who react as you do. And because movies are the most total and encompassing art form we have, these reactions can seem the most personal and, maybe the most important, imaginable. The romance of movies is not just in those stories and those people on the screen but in the adolescent dream of meeting others who feel as you do about what you’ve seen. You do meet them, of course, and you know each other at once because you talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies.” FilmSocietyLonelinessMoviesFilms Book:For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies Source: For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies
“Before seeing Truffaut 's Small Change, I was afraid it was going to be one of those simple, natural films about childhood which I generally try to avoid I'm just not good enough to go to them. But this series of sketches on the general theme of the resilience of children turns out to be that rarity a poetic comedy that's really funny.” TryingChildrenEnoughFilmTurnsNaturalSimpleComedySeeingChildhoodSeriesResilienceThemePoeticGood EnoughNot Good EnoughRaritySmall Changes Book:When the lights go down Source: When the lights go down
“Is there something in druggy subjects that encourages directors to make imitation film noir? Film noir itself becomes an addiction.” FilmSubjectsDirectorsAddictionImitationNoirFilm Noir Book:Hooked Source: Hooked
“The movies have been so rank the last couple of years that when I see people lining up to buy tickets I sometimes think that the movies aren't drawing an audience - they're inheriting an audience. People just want to go to a movie. They're stung repeatedly, yet their desire for a good movie - for any movie - is so strong that all over the country they keep lining up.” PeopleThinkingWantYearsHas BeensCountrySometimesLastsFilmDesireStrongAudienceCoupleHollywoodDrawingTicketsGood MovieLining Up Book:Raising Kane and Other Essays Source: Raising Kane and Other Essays
“if you think it so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets.” IfsThinkingTryingMayFilmEasyDifficultPoetCriticsPainter Book:For Keeps Source: For Keeps
“There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counter-balance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films - the freedom to analyze their implications. How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience?” PeopleIfsWantBelieveUseHandsSeemsFilmTalkingAudienceViolenceGoes OnBalanceDirectorsPressesDon't BelieveDenyAssumptionMovieCensorshipOffendedImplicationsBrillianceBrutalityThugFreedom Of The PressDazzling Author:Pauline Kael
