Cinematic Genius Quotes

My bottom line is that I think Ridley Scott is one of the greatest visual artists of our time and I feel very privileged that he wants to work with me, so I go with that flow.

Steven Spielberg was my childhood hero.

Hitchcock was one of the few people in Hollywood who had a brand. Every movie he made was an Alfred Hitchcock movie, couldn't have been anyone else.

You can watch any Hitchcock film and be blown away.

Any time someone says you have an opportunity to work with Martin Scorsese you jump at the chance.

I'm crazy about Steven Spielberg. Another inspiration for me, and I don't know where it came from, is children. If I'm down, I'll take a book with children's pictures and look at it and it will just lift me up. Being around children is magic.

I have a profound admiration for Fellini. I met him lately and he's just fantastic. I feel very close to him even though he's very Italian. But his films could have been made in every country. When I say, I feel close to him, then also because we're both born on January 20th.

Kurosawa is the sensei, the Shakespeare, of filmmaking.

[Bong Joon-ho'] is quite different but technically, he is as clever as [Alfred] Hitchcock. That's saying something. In humanitarian terms, I think he is much cleverer. He is one of the best directors I've worked with. I absolutely adore working with him.

It is universally agreed that Jean Renoir was one of the greatest of all directors, and he was also one of the warmest and most entertaining.

I never met who I really wanted to meet, and that was Charlie Chaplin.

I am the best film director in the world.

We’re all children of Kubrick, aren’t we? Is there anything you can do that he hasn’t done?

Mr. Hitchcock knew what he was doing.

You got to be careful mentioning people as great as Clint Eastwood. You can't put me in the same sentence as that man.

You know, I think Chris Nolan is an incredibly intelligent filmmaker, and I think Leonardo DiCaprio is an incredibly talented actor.

And there was a very famous man called Michael Powell, who probably is the greatest director all round, except possibly a couple of men.

Rob [Reiner] is a teddy bear. He's hell delicious. He's a really good director. He's a great soul. In the movie business, I would call him a movie mom. The only person I hold in equal esteem is Clint Eastwood. Now I have worked with a lot of terrific directors, and I don't mean to be putting any of them below their own station, but these two, I relish working with them.

In Goodfellas they have this one scene where the camera goes down some steps and walks through a kitchen into a restaurant and the critics were all over this as evidence of the genius of Scorsese and Scorsese is a genius.

The term 'giant' is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits.

I still don't feel I know Hitchcock at all. I find that the more one looks, the more elusive he becomes. But my admiration for Hitchcock the filmmaker remains undiminished. He is a giant of the cinema and the darkness in him informs his cinematic language. You can't separate one from the other.

I feel safe in saying this, and that is that Peter Weir is without a doubt one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. I'd open a door in a movie for him if he asked me to.

Of Orson Welles: It's like meeting God without dying.

Well I'd really love to work with Robert De Niro, because he's still the most talented actor out there.

Most directors have one masterpiece by which they are known. Kurosawa has at least eight or nine.