Top 1200 French Cinema Quotes & Sayings

Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism.

When I got to college I simply decided that I could speak French, because I just could not spend any more time in French classes. I went ahead and took courses on French literature, some of them even taught in French.

When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.

There is more to Indian cinema than just Bollywood. I think regional cinema, especially Tamil and Marathi cinema are exploring some really bold themes.

Cinema is not about format, and it's not about venue. Cinema is an approach. Cinema is a state of mind on the part of the filmmaker. I've seen commercials that have cinema in them, and I've seen Oscar-winning movies that don't. I'm fine with this.

French cinema has always been very interesting, and it's still very powerful. I think it goes to show that it's great to still have a cinema that doesn't try to emulate, for example, American cinema.

As an actor, I am only excited about doing good work - be it in mainstream Hindi cinema, Hollywood, a French film, or a Marathi movie.

French cinema audiences usually don't express anything. Certainly not satisfaction.

'Black cinema' I don't even know what that means. It's just cinema. When Paul Thomas Anderson makes a movie, we don't just say it's 'white cinema.'

Cinema is empathy machinery, and we multiply our life experience through cinema. When it is good cinema, it almost counts as a personal experience.

A romantic or classical view of the French approach would have been to say, 'It's a French company; let no one attack it. Let's block any merger. But the reality is Alcatel-Lucent is not a French company; it's a global company. Its main markets are China and the U.S. Its ownership is foreign; most of its managers aren't French.

When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.

France loves American cinema because when an American remake is successful, it makes us money to produce more French films.

I just love France, I love French people, I love the French language, I love French food. I love their mentality. I just feel like it's me. I'm very French.

I believe in cinema! Unfortunately, 90 per cent of Hindi cinema is non-cinema. Only marketing works here. Even the item songs in these films are an extension of marketing.

It's very important to say that French doesn't belong to France and to French people. Now you have very wonderful poets and writers in French who are not French or Algerian - who are from Senegal, from Haiti, from Canada, a lot of parts of the world.

[Albert] Camus' was born in Algeria of French nationality, and was assimilated into the French colony, although the French colonists rejected him absolutely because of his poverty.

I just feel at Paris, I will have more chances compared to Madrid. I'm French and I choose a French team. People must be happy to keep a French player in the league.

I'm always fetishizing the French woman and French taste and style. My assistant will make fun of me because every time we're picking the direction of a collection, I say the same thing: 'I want it to be really French.'

The film The Conquest will be seen on many different levels and the American point of view is always more technical. The French are less technical - it's 'I like it, or I don't like it.' I hope that this film can have a life in the U.S. - it's the grand country of cinema. I grew up with Hollywood movies, so for a French director to have a film distributed in the U.S. is a real opportunity.

I am still associated with a heroic period in French cinema, and my name remains linked to this period.

I don't think life gets any better than sitting in the sun while a legend of French cinema tells you stories about making 'Belle de Jour' and other wonderful films, and eating great food.

We need French chaplains and imams, French-speaking, who learn French, who love France. And who adhere to its values. And also French financing.

I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.

I grew up watching a lot of French cinema.

People know that I have a great love for cinema. Not just for commercial cinema, but for the “cinema d’auteur.” But to me, two of the great “auteurs” are actually actors and they both happen to be French. One is Alain Delon and the other is Jean-Paul Belmondo.

French actors are so much better and cinema is better over there.

OSS 117 and maybe Un Balcon Sur La Mer directed by Nicole Garcia. It's a typical French movie with typical French themes with French actors, a French director.

I went to Brown to be a French professor, and I didn't know what I was doing except that I loved French. When I got to Paris and I could speak French, I know how much it helped me to establish relationships with Karl Lagerfeld, with the late Yves St. Laurent. French, it just helps you if you're in fashion. The French people started style.

When you set a play in the French Quarter in New Orleans, it's hard not to acknowledge the whole African-American, French, white mixing of races. That's what the French Quarter is: it's a Creole community.

I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.

My sense of cinema improved slowly as I started watching South cinema, got to know that cinema is much appreciated here.

I feel very close to French culture and to the French humanism, which occasionally one finds, even in the highest places. And therefore, all of my books have been written in French.

What I'm really trying to do is recreate classic Hollywood cinema and classic genre cinema from a woman's point of view. Because most cinema is really made for men, how can you create cinema that's for women without having it be relegated to a ghetto of "chick flick" or something like that?

Film is pop art. It's not whether it's auteur cinema or not; that's a false distinction. Cinema is cinema.

Writing in French is one of my ambitions. I'd like to be able to dream one day in French. Italian and French are the two languages that I'd like to know.

The French aren't known for being hilarious. When I told Parisians I was interested in French humor, they'd say 'French what?'

My wife's French. I mean I speak a bit of French but I've lived amongst French, you know, most of my adult life.

Americans have a certain idea of what films are and the French have a much deeper sense of cinema. The cinémathèque is like a temple for them. And the people who write about it are really intellectuals. It's just a sensibility that they appreciate it.

Belgium is half French-speaking and half Flemish, and I was born on the French side. So we spoke it a lot - like, in kindergarten, it was almost all French. But then I moved to New Zealand when I was 10, where we obviously spoke English all the time, so I lost the French a little bit.

I am extremely proud that our cinema is being recognised in the West. I want Indian cinema to get its dignity, not by giving them the kind of films they expect from us, but by making cinema in a way that carries the legacy of the mainstream masters forward.

We can't keep thinking in a limited way about what cinema is. We still don't know what cinema is. Maybe cinema could only really apply to the past or the first 100 years, when people actually went to a theater to see a film, you see?

It was announced as a French victory by the French Minister of War. I did not see any sign of victory but only the retreat of the French forces engaged in the battle.

Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.

What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution. I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. 'The Dreamers' was a total homage to cinema and that love for it.

I was a young film student around the time of the new wave in film in the 1970s; old Hollywood was naff and over. For me, as a film student, I was going to see French and Italian cinema; American cinema was 'Easy Rider' and 'Taxi Driver.' Everything was gritty.

There is more to Indian cinema than just Bollywood. I think regional cinema, especially Tamil and Marathi cinema, are exploring some really bold themes.

I want viewers want to talk about The Conquest. I want the dialogue to start after the movie. The cinema is there to leave a trace. I hope my film leaves a trace and that it will open a door for French cinema and that tomorrow other directors will make political movies. The job of a filmmaker today is to talk about the world surrounding him and, through his movies, to both entertain and raise questions about modern society.

I think it's a great pity in the Anglophone world that we conflate cinema verite and Direct Cinema; they're, in fact, ontological opposites. In Direct Cinema, we create a fictional reality with characters and pretend we're not that.

French cinema allows women to look... a certain way and be talented at the same time.

My way of remaining French was the financing scheme I used for Quest for Fire, with Fox funds, since it started as a 100% American production. The film was not in French and yet was French in style, reflecting my personality.

My film-making is the privilege of French cinema. I would have to do things totally differently elsewhere. But I think I could learn from that and have fun being part of a bigger collective.

We grew up near a cinematheque in Cleveland, so we were very influenced by international cinema, the French New Wave, Italian neo-realists.

My cinema - the '50s, '60s - is different from the cinema today so I thought that it would not be bad to show that kind of cinema where we could dream.

When you move around a lot, there are little bits of you from everywhere. I mean, my father's French, and I speak French, and there's a kind of struggle in me that says, 'I'd like to be French.' But I've never been fully part of that culture, that role.

When I was a young man, my friends and I and all of us in New York were very influenced by French cinema. French cinema played an enormous influence on those of us who wanted to be filmmakers.

The big French movie distributors are the Trojan horse of the American cinema.

Why is there this myth? People say, 'Oh, you are a style icon. You're 'French, French, French.' It's not true, you know; there are stylish people everywhere.

It's the golden age of French cinema again but it's because Sarkozy had the guts to push through copyright law.

All my life, I have loved and been inspired by French cinema, and as a studio head it has been my pride and joy to have the ability to bring movies to audiences around the world.