I think all the history of the Jewish people is about adaptation.
— Michel Hazanavicius
Godard never sought to be sympathetic.
'Avatar' is a great movie. I really love it.
To work with kids is difficult. To work with non-actors is difficult.
Here in France, what we love is Life. And all the pleasures that go with it.
What I love is to create a show and for people to enjoy it and be aware that's what it is: a show.
My life is OK. I live in France. It's a very cool country to make films.
My ambition with 'Redoubtable' was to make a film that would be aesthetically pleasing, charming, and touching.
I've always been against the idea of dividing films between festival titles and popular movies. I think you can make films that are both.
I only have one obsession - not to be boring.
French cinema audiences usually don't express anything. Certainly not satisfaction.
Maybe I've seen more Hollywood movies than French movies.
I'm very happy in France making movies.
Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.
I try to respect the rules of the silent movies and I tried to make signification to make sense, and also the crew were very good and the fact that we shot in LA in the real Hollywood, studios and houses. We shot in the bed of Mary Pickford, and you cannot be any more accurate than that, so that helped a lot.
When you're with your wife, you don't say I love you to your wife every day but the ways you look at her and your actions are another way to communicate. Don't focus on dialogue, only focus on what you're expressing.
Sure, I watched a lot of Hollywood movies. Maybe I've seen more Hollywood movies than French movies.
In France, it's really different the way you live. It's a non-religious country. The public space is not religious; religion is a private thing.
When you write a script that you've felt in your soul for a long time, you can't ask the actors to go through the same emotions. You have to do part of the job to make things as easy as possible for them.
It's a dream for a director, at least to try a studio movie.
You - as a director, you have to do your job, you have to show things, and you don't have to ask the actors to do it, or the dialogue.
The silent movie is an emotional cinema: it's sensory; the fact that you don't go through a text brings you back to a basic way of telling a story predicated on the feelings you have created.
With silent films, you're better off avoiding irony, because the spectator is your accomplice. It's this pact that leads to emotion being created.
Even if I make fun of him, I try to portray him as a human being. Sometimes because he's the great Jean-Luc Godard, we see him as a concept.
I strongly believe cinema is popular culture. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's life.
If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know.
French people are strange about America, I think.
Bernard Herrmann was a genius, a great, great composer.
I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie.
An idea is something you work on to make it work and a desire is much deeper in a way.
But sometimes I think you have to try to do things that people don't think are doable.
When you do not have the dialogue to explain things, you will use everything to show and to tell the story. I think that this is what makes you believe that it is impeccable.
Sometimes when an actor says something almost perfect, but you know you have to edit it, if you tell them to change something immediately, it will come out great.
Hollywood is much more than America. Hollywood belongs to all of the planet.
Silence is a universal language. It's like music or painting.
I watched a lot of silent movies. It's a very specific way of writing, which is more of a challenge than the directing. You have to describe images. It's easier to shoot them.
I can't force people to agree with me.
I made a movie in Morocco. I made a movie in Brazil. I've made commercials all over the world. Every set looks like another set.
I don't make films to reproduce reality.
Anne Wiazemsky wrote two books about her life with Jean-Luc Godard between 1966 and 1969. And I first read the second one, which is about the fall of their love story and their marriage. I immediately thought there was a movie to make with this book because it was so funny, and I thought the love story was very, very touching.
Some people probably think me telling Godard's story is blasphemy. My friends were worried. But he's not my hero or my god. Godard is like the leader of a sect, and I'm an agnostic.
I always try to make popular films. Even in black-and-white and silent.
When you speak of silent movies, everyone thinks of Charlie Chaplin first.
I am unusual for a Frenchman - I have absolutely nothing against the United States.
But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director.
I make almost all the decisions on set and have to deal with all the financial aspects.
Robert DeNiro, who may be the greatest living actor, usually acts in a way which is very stone-faced, like Steve McQueen.
I love silent cinema but don't hold it sacred. Like any branch of film there are some very boring films alongside the masterpieces.
I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.
This is the problem with language, and this is what makes silent movies fun, because the connection with them, me or the audience is not with the language. There's no question of interpretation of what we are saying it's just about feeling. You create your own story.
