Visions of Filmmaking: 2 quotes from Truffaut & Godard

"Rosselini's strength is to completely ignore filmmaking as a technical issue, it just doesn't exist. When he recounts a scenario, he describes impossible things. He speaks about the British army entering Orleans. One thinks: lots of extras. Then you see Joan of Arc, and ten cardboard soldiers entering a small model. It's fantastic because, having to renounce things in order to film, it's this sum of renunciations that created a masterpiece." - François Truffaut



"In Scarface, when Paul Muni takes his machine gun, we feel that he might easily have done something else. I like to convey this. Convey it strongly enough to give the feeling that 5 minutes before, Seberg wouldn't have betrayed Belmondo. She wouldn't have turned him in, or if she'd bumped into somebody, other things would've happened and we'd have a different film. Like, if somebody gets run over in the street. Had he crossed 5 minutes later, he'd be okay."