Quotes

"I am a Communist, certainly, but that doesn't mean I have to make films about the wheat harvest." (1971 interview with Roger Ebert)

Nous vivons une époque où les pizzas arrivent plus vite que la police.

• We live in an era where pizzas show up faster than the police.

There is no new wave, only the sea.

[on his movie Ophélia (1963)] I saw it recently and it was still execrable.

[on divorcing Stéphane Audran] I found myself becoming more interested in her as an actress than a wife.

I have always been fascinated by smiling killers.

I saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) at least 10 times between 1937 and 1940 and I think it influenced my work, a little. It was a good horror film. The death of the witch was the best thing Disney ever did.

I'm not at all interested in who-done-its. If you conceal a character's guilt, you imply that his guilt is the most important thing about him. I want the audience to know who the murderer is, so that we can consider his personality.

[2003 interview, asked for his opinion on the French film industry] I think that we should distinguish between making films and the industry. A number of serious problems are afflicting the industry and some people have behaved quite appallingly. The majority of producers was damaged. As for the artistic quality of our films, I believe that over the last five years we have seen the emergence of some interesting personalities.

The bourgeoisie are the way I show them in my movies, neither bad nor good. They make me laugh. Quite honestly and objectively they never were a hundred percent nice. Because they are scared of living. That's what makes them how they are. They fear the real life. That's what makes me laugh.

My first three films [Le Beau Serge (1958), The Cousins (1959), Web of Passion (1959)] did quite well and then I had four terrible disasters [The Good Girls (1960), Wise Guys (1961), The Third Lover (1962), Ophélia (1963)]. I was obliged to make the films that were offered to me, like the Tiger films. It was a useful experience, because when I could once more make the films I wanted, I brought with me what I had learned while making those films. I could work faster, making one film after another.

[asked about his use of blue in films such as The Unfaithful Wife (1969), The Breach (1970) and Pleasure Party (1975)] Blue is above all the colour of madness, a form of madness. A psychiatrist once told me that the dominant colour in the drawings and paintings of the mentally deranged is blue. I thought it was strange: "How could it be blue, which is such a calm colour?" And he said: "No, think about it; try to imagine living perpetually in blue." It's the most unbalanced, and unbalancing, colour. Voilà! So, when I wanted to show imbalance, I used blue - to please that psychiatrist, whom I like quite a bit....and it's true that it has a strange effect.