Italian Cinema Quotes

I remember that even my first impression of Italian cinema was pictures by paparazzi because my mom was reading all of these trash magazines with paparazzo pictures.

Fellini was a little lofty for a teenage boy, but certainly he was a huge influence.

I was so besotted with '8½' that, when it was on TV, I used to take pictures with my 35-mm. camera of the frames of the film. That was the first time I'd ever really seen Italians on screen.

There are many actors who have inspired me: Spencer Tracy for his incredible elegance and, of course, Cary Grant. But, there's also an Italian actor I admire a great deal: Alberto Sordi.

The spaghetti Western genre is definitely one of favorites.

'Beatrice Cenci' was an amazing film. If it were released today it'd win Best Picture. It's so well done, it's so contemporary, and the filmmaking is so smart.

Well, Fellini... there is always Fellini.

There was a film that really affected me, 'La Strada' by Fellini, where Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina travel around on his little motorcycle thing.

My discussion is one that has gone all the way from Fistful of Dollars through Once Upon a Time in America. But if you look closely at all these films, you find in them the same meanings, the same humor, the same point of view, and, also, the same pains.

'Cinema Paradiso' is a fantastic film, I love that.

If you're not [Federico] Fellini you might make something very vulgar. Animation made it possible to maintain unity with all these different narratives.

I have a profound admiration for Fellini. I met him lately and he's just fantastic. I feel very close to him even though he's very Italian. But his films could have been made in every country. When I say, I feel close to him, then also because we're both born on January 20th.

I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.

Spaghetti Westerns are really brutal and operatic with a surreal quality to the violence.

I prefer to live in the country where it's quiet. Woody Allen movies there are dubbed into Italian.

Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.

But Clint I love, because Clint was my mentor. I knew nothing about making an Italian movie.

[Dario Argento] speaks very broken English - he's Italian, so I'm going to do a very bad Italian impersonation - but he asked me my name, and I told him, and he goes, "Walk across the room." He looked at me, and he said, "Do you want to be in my movie [Two Evil Eyes]?" I was, like, "Yeah! Yeah, I do!"He goes, "Okay! You play Betty!" And I was, like, "Oh, I'm playing an extra named Betty! Great!" So we walked out, thinking that I was playing an extra named Betty, no lines, just background.

But we did the Pink Panther not in Hollywood, in Italy.

The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies

I see wonderful films by Bertolucci, Visconti, and Fellini.

You can't host an Italian film festival without Marcello Mastroianni. It just doesn't feel right.

I liked the Hollywood stuff. But I also liked the fact that in both, you know, I guess in the, like, the auteur, the art film auteur at that time was Lina Wertmuller. So, you go see "Swept Away" or you go see a movie she did "Blood Feud" with Sophia Loren and Giancarlo Giannini. And I remember "Wifemistress" was a big movie at that time, really liked it, Laura Antonelli.

Lucio Fulci is such a massively underrated director. Everyone knows him as the Godfather of Gore.

And also, Sergio Leone was considered in Italy a director of category B, not a big director.