Jacques Rivette

“Cinema is necessarily the spectacular.”

“All films are about the relationship between the real and the imaginary.”

“There are things that you can’t say, so you have to film them.”

“The cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”

“The problem is not to make a film, but to be in a state to make a film.”

“All films are born free and equal.”

“I prefer to start from a situation, a number of characters, and a location. And I work on that.”

“For me, the cinema is not a given. It is a question. And the films are the provisional answers to this question.”

“The point is not to know what the actors are going to say, but to know what they are going to do.”

“Each shot is a moral choice.”

“The best criticism is a new film.”

“Every film is a documentary of its own making.”

“The cinema allows you to film the invisible.”

“What is cinema? It is a series of choices, choices about what to show and what not to show.”