Italian Film Quotes

I wanted already to be a filmmaker after I saw 'La Dolce Vita.'

I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.

Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.

But Clint I love, because Clint was my mentor. I knew nothing about making an Italian movie.

But we did the Pink Panther not in Hollywood, in Italy.

And also, Sergio Leone was considered in Italy a director of category B, not a big director.

You can't host an Italian film festival without Marcello Mastroianni. It just doesn't feel right.

My favorite movie ever is 'Bicycle Thieves.'

When I make an American movie it's going to come out all over the world-it doesn't happen the same way for an Italian film or a French film.

I was offered to play an Italian part in an Italian film. Although I could not take it up because I did not have the time, the kind of characters being offered to us are changing.

I listen to Morricone, the famed Italian film composer, while I'm working.

Italian cameramen grow up immersed in an awareness of light. It is part of their mythology.

I wanted to go to Rome. I got an offer to do an Italian film and I went.

Vittorio De Sica famously made 'Bicycle Thieves'; that's the film of his everybody knows.

I love challenges, and I believe that the challenge of quality cinema should not be underestimated as an important part of the Italian cultural offer.

There are lots of wonderful old Italian actors. You don't need to take an Egyptian to play an Italian actor.

The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point.

'Swept Away' is one of my favorite films of my father. I've seen it about 20 times. It's a cult movie in Italy.

In 1993, my first documentary was about the civil war in Algeria. That was in French and in Arabic. Another short film I did was silent. What I'm trying to say is that, yes, I'm Italian, and yes, I make films with Italian money, but personally, I've always been invested in the broader world of film-making.

I'm going to do an adaptation of the Italian film, Bread and Tulips. I really like that film.

I started out doing commercials, like Diet Coke and Pizza Hut. And I started to find there was a different life for me, in a different field. From there, I got a call from a director in Italy, and we did 'Indio' I and II, and that's where it started.

My last experience of film-making was Tickets, a three-episode film in Italy, the third of which is directed by myself. It's not for me to judge whether it's a good film or a bad film, but what I could say is that nobody had a cultural or linguistic issue with what was produced.