Claude Chabrol Quotations

I love mirrors. They let one pass through the surface of things.

There is no new wave, only the sea.

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.

You have to accept the fact that sometimes you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue.

I brought the film like a flower to the world.

Stupidity is infinitely more fascinating that intelligence. Intelligence has its limits while stupidity has none.

You make a film to distract people, to interest them, perhaps to make them think, perhaps to help them be a little less naive, a little better than they were.

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.

To observe a profoundly stupid individual can be very enriching, and that's why we should never feel contempt for them.

Films with a message just make me laugh.

Laying tracks gives you freedom without being too obvious.

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.

Some colors are very difficult to render, and you must compensate to get the color you want on the screen.

We live in an era where pizzas show up faster than the police.

I'm not pessimistic about people in general, but only about the way they live.

I am a Communist, certainly, but that doesn't mean I have to make films about the wheat harvest.

A woman confronting men is a proper subject, it is inexhaustible.

As far as I was concerned, either I was a homosexual or I wasn't, so making films would change nothing.

First I went to the Sorbonne to do my licence en lettres, but I also started to study law

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.

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.

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.

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.

On their own, each [character] is a victim of no importance. But when you bring them together, they become a dangerous weapon. Jeanne is the vowel and Sophie the consonant. Psychologists know this phenomenon well. Each individual is harmless, but together they create an explosive chemical reaction. It's like Bonnie and Clyde, like Thelma and Louise.

I'm not wild about hand-held shots.

A woman is subject matter enough.

Every time I saw the Elf affair on television, I switched on the set because I found it incredibly funny. I thought that, if we could put that it in a film, it would give people watching it a certain amusement to see these people in their true ridiculousness.

There was one thing which I thought was tremendous fun, namely finding as many angles as possible within the confines of a single room.

I must admit that this film echoes the Elf affair in France. I found the real case on TV so entertaining.