Michel Hazanavicius

“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. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling.”

“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.”

“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 am unusual for a Frenchman - I have absolutely nothing against the United States.”

“I don't make films to reproduce reality.”

“When you speak of silent movies, everyone thinks of Charlie Chaplin first.”

“Silence is a universal language. It's like music or painting.”

“Bernard Herrmann was a genius, a great, great composer.”

“Maybe I've seen more Hollywood movies than French movies.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Robert DeNiro, who may be the greatest living actor, usually acts in a way which is very stone-faced, like Steve McQueen.”

“But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director.”

“What I love is to create a show and for people to enjoy it and be aware that's what it is: a show.”

“Sure, I watched a lot of Hollywood movies. Maybe I've seen more Hollywood movies than French movies.”

“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.”

“I think we are at the very beginning of high changes, not only in terms of digital film, but in the way the movies will be screened, whether they'll be screened on phones, on computers - on everything.”

“I strongly believe cinema is popular culture. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's life.”

“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.”

“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.”