Cinematic Truth Quotes

Jean-Luc Godard said that cinema is the truth 24 frames a second. I think cinema is lies 24 frames a second.

Here's an easy way to see if a war movie is being truthful: If you see an explosion on a faraway hillside and the sound of the explosion and the detonation of the bomb happen at the same time - if they're putting the sound and the vision together in the same moment - they're going toward our cultural understanding of war, not the reality of war.

A good film is also a documentary

Sometimes movies gloss over things, and it was important to me that this was realistic.

Ever since ROME, OPEN CITY, I have maintained a conscious, determined endeavor to try to understand the world in which I live, in a spirit of humility and respect for the facts and for history. What as the meaning of ROME, OPEN CITY? We were emerging from the tragedy of the war. We had all taken part in it, for we were all its victims. I sought only to picture the essence of things. I had absolutely no interest in telling a romanticized tale along the usual lives of film drama. The actual facts were each more dramatic than any screen cliche.

Film is a window to the real world but a lie that makes you believe the unbelievable.

I think audiences get too comfortable and familiar in today's movies. They believe everything they're hearing and seeing. I like to shake that up.

I don't believe in the deplorable notion of realism in the cinema: you can over-reach it, and it becomes as false as convention.

The majority of my background is multi-camera format, which is very broad and a very arch perception of reality. Whereas single camera tends to be more truthful and a little more intimate of a medium.

Some people feel fulfillment from a bitter end - it gives them some sort of sense of reality. But, when you're dealing with reality, I feel like films should discover the part that is happy.

I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room.

There is no realism in American films. No realism, but something much better, great truth.

I don't approach my movies with a target audience in mind. I try to make something that's true to the subject matter as much as possible, while still being entertaining and fun.

There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

In documentaries, there's a truth that unfolds unnaturally, and you get to chronicle it. In narratives, you have to create the situations so that the truth will come out.

I grew up in L.A., and I don't think I've seen L.A. onscreen in a way that felt real to me. There are definitely movies, but they are few and far between.

As the camera, I try to subordinate every word to be truthful and honest to each character's context.

I personally feel like, if you're watching a film about war, you should get a sense of what it's really like.

The cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second.

If a film is a real knockout like 'Raging Bull,' it does not matter that it might not have happened like that.

Every dramatist will tell you that they know deep down what happened in the course of making that film and to what degree they took steps that were convenient and to what degree they took steps in telling their story that were dishonest. You know in your heart of hearts.

My films are as much concerned with truth as anything in vérité. Maybe more so.

People say they make movies to show what 'really happens.' But they only show what they choose to show.

I film normal-life subjects in natural settings that some people would consider uncinematic. But what I want to show is nature itself, as the truth of life.

I believe every time you film anybody, you create reality with that person - whether it's fiction or nonfiction.