A Chill of Excitement

2022-07-13T01:31:59+00:00April 2nd, 2019|Tags: , , |

“Every time I make a movie, I feel that a few scenes have reached that level, but I’ve never felt that way about an entire film. I can tell the difference.

With the scenes that really become cinema, when I’m editing the filmed footage, I feel a chill of excitement. It would be ideal to make a film in which every scene has risen to that level.”

– Akira Kurosawa

Kindred Spirits

2022-07-09T02:09:37+00:00May 1st, 2013|Tags: , , , |

The cinema is the great compensatory art, the one that natural-born artists who lack any particular technical skill, craft, or knowledge gravitate toward, because it’s the one where the equipment itself supplies most of the needed technique. The artists need only bring their being—because being is the cinema’s very stuff and subject. That’s why it’s wrong to call movies a visual medium; it’s a shorthand that I’ve indulged in, too, but there’s actually no such thing as a beautiful image. If a director happens to be endowed with a visual gift (such as Stanley Kubrick, who started as a photographer), so much the better, but what makes an image beautiful is that it’s infused with a beautiful soul. That’s why there’s no formula for recognizing or identifying a beautiful image; it’s not definable as a geometric or formal quality, but »

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