Jacques Rivette Quotations

Whereas with Sirk, everything is always filmed. No matter what the script, he's always a real director.

Their films would probably be better if they'd seen a few more films, which runs counter to this idiotic theory that you run the risk of being influenced if you see too much.

Kubrick is a machine, a mutant, a Martian. He has no human feeling whatsoever. But it's great when the machine films other machines, as in 2001.

And I took a long time to appreciate Lynch.

Cocteau is someone who has made such a profound impression on me that there's no doubt he's influenced every one of my films.

For me, the film has to be incredibly bad to make me want to pack up and leave.

Many filmmakers pretend that they never see anything, which has always seemed odd to me.

I guess I like a lot of directors. Or at least I try to.

And the fact that I see so many films really seems to amaze certain people.

I reject the word 'script' entirely-at any rate in the usual sense. I prefer the old usage-usually scenario-which it had in the Commedia dell'Arte, meaning an outline or scheme: it implies a dynamism, a number of ideas and principles from which one can set out to find the best possible approach to filming.

And Twin Peaks, the Film is the craziest film in the history of cinema. I have no idea what happened, I have no idea what I saw, all I know is that I left the theater floating six feet above the ground.

When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980.