A woman confronting men is a proper subject, it is inexhaustible.
A woman is subject matter enough.
As far as I was concerned, either I was a homosexual or I wasn't, so making films would change nothing.
But for Le Beau Serge I mainly chose friends and old hams. In using these people, I realized that I liked barnstormers and actors who exaggerated a little.
First I went to the Sorbonne to do my licence en lettres, but I also started to study law.
I am fascinated by homosexuals too. A very interesting subject. I even wrote a film about two men who wanted to have a baby.
I brought the film like a flower to the world.
I don't need to sleep with my actresses. But I do need to feel there is some communication, some mutual respect.
I like making black and white films in natural surroundings, but I much prefer shooting a color film inside a studio where the colors are easier to control.
I like to have the screen full of color, twenty colors on the screen at once, fifty colors. There are no dominants despite what people have said.
I love mirrors. They let one pass through the surface of things.
I remember an article, I can't recall who by, it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which said that now the Wall was down, there could be no more class war. Only someone with money could ever say such a thing.
I spent the next seven years doing little - reading, painting, listening to music.
I wanted to make a film about stupid people that was very vulgar and deeply stupid. From that moment on I can hardly be reproached for making a film that is about stupid people.
I wrote a 15-page script, which I fashioned in what I hoped would be the Rossellini style. But he said it was unsuitable.
I'm not pessimistic about people in general, but only about the way they live.
I'm not wild about hand-held shots.
I've always enjoyed women's company.
In L'Oeil du malin it's a bit different: the wish for destruction comes more from the man's mediocrity than from anything else.
It's often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits. I prefer not to write for specific people.
L'Oeil du malin was a bit of the same. It was about a pitiful man and the story was seen from his point of view. And so the film was, in a way, also pitiful, mean.
Laying tracks gives you freedom without being too obvious.
Les Bonnes femmes is the one I like best of all my films. I like Ophelia too, but I prefer Les Bonnes femmes.
My father wanted me to be a pharmacist like himself. He had been a doctor, but he no longer believed in medicine; so he became a pharmacist, but he believed in that hardly more.
My last political film was Poulet au vinaigre. What I was interested in then was to show the provincial bourgeoisie as starkly as possible, not in too heavy a way, but so that that critique was definitely a feature of the film.
Some colors are very difficult to render, and you must compensate to get the color you want on the screen.
There was one thing which I thought was tremendous fun, namely finding as many angles as possible within the confines of a single room.
There's one thing which I hate about color films... people who use up a lot of their despairing producer's money by working in the laboratory to bring out the dominant hues, or to make color films where there isn't any color.
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