The following quote comes from Charles Bitsch’s interview with director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, Bigger Than Life) from “Cahiers Du Cinéma, the 1950s: Neo-realism, Hollywood, New Wave” and given today’s blockbuster cinema I really don’t think I need to add any additional context to clue you in to why I wanted to post it after seeing it on This Must be the Place.
“I am interested in the story and the characters. The camera is an instrument, it’s the microscope which allows you to detect the ‘melody of the look’. It’s a wonderful instrument because its microscopic power is for me the equivalent of introspection in a writer, and the unrolling of the film in the camera corresponds, in my opinion, to the train of thought of the writer. But if the character on whom I am working has nothing to photograph, then the camera becomes useless; all you are doing then is playing with the most expensive electric train set in the world.”
Image of Ray and Jean-Luc Godard via Close Up Film Centre
