Walter Murch Quotes

Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.

I always had a dream about trying to make a movie that had no dialogue in it, that was just music and pictures. I still haven't done it yet, but I tried to get close in the beginning.

When you see a silent movie, you understand everything that's going on from the images because the images are so strong.

The silent movie is an emotional cinema: it's sensory; the fact that you don't go through a text brings you back to a basic way of telling a story predicated on the feelings you have created.

Usually, I'll drop twenty to forty per cent of the dialogue - you can do so much with gesture. I'm still waiting to do a silent film.

In a silent film, the visuals are of utmost importance.

I'm going to make a film where not one word is really important. I'm going to make it all action.

I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.

As a director, you're looking for ways to tell the story with the whole image and not primarily dialogue.

I've always been a follower of silent movies. I see film as a visual medium with a musical accompaniment, and dialogue is a raft that goes on with it.

I discovered that silent film is almost an advantage. You just have to think of the feeling for it to show. No lines pollute it. It doesn't take much - a gaze, an eyelash flutter - for the emotion to be vivid.

When you make a movie, you do it so piecemeal. You're doing it, not only scene by scene, out of order, but shot by shot, line by line. And there's this idea that the director has the whole thing in his or her head and they're going to somehow weave it all together in the end.

It's about storytelling. The story is told through images. So with the cast, I had to make sure that the emotions were readable without sound... I know some great actors, if you turn off the sound, you don't really know what they're saying.

I have considered the directing, actually. Not so much the writing. That is not really interesting, but the directing is really interesting to me.

I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.

I have always believed that directing a film is like telling a story. You have to tell it well so that it is appreciated.

I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move!

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.

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.

I understand why people went nuts for 'The Artist.' We use words so much, it's nice to be able to explore a different way of communication, to be able to express silently what someone - or something - is thinking or feeling.

The style of direction in 'Room,' maybe a little bit like 'Spotlight,' tries to be hidden.

I think, as directors, they may recognize, more than the rest of the body of filmmakers, exactly what you do as a director, because I think sometimes the conception is if the camera isn't swinging around, and it's not pyrotechnic or worthily melodramatic, then the direction is uninvolved.

With silent films, you're better off avoiding irony, because the spectator is your accomplice. It's this pact that leads to emotion being created.

I didn't quite realise until we started to put together our first cut of 'Wonderstruck' how much time is spent with no words spoken whatsoever.

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.