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I want to thank three person: I want to thank Billy Wilder. I want to thank Billy Wilder. And I want to thank Billy Wilder.

Michel Hazanavicius

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Michel Hazanavicius
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 29
Actor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Paris
France
Michel Hazanavičius
Wilder
Billy
Thank
Three
Persons
Person

More quotes by Michel Hazanavicius

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I looked at a lot of photos from Hollywood in the '20s, photographs of silent movies being filmed all over the world which are very specific and very evocative. Berenice, the lead actress, is my wife. She really followed the same path with me.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I can say is usually people are slightly confused. They think that silent movies are old. But, the fact is, they are old because they have been made in the '20s. That's the thing that makes them old. Not the format. The format is just a format. It's not an old format.
Michel Hazanavicius
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Sure, I watched a lot of Hollywood movies. Maybe I've seen more Hollywood movies than French movies
Michel Hazanavicius
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It's not my job. The Weinstein company, it's their job to convince people. My job was to make the movie. That's what I did. I know what we did in France was to have the maximum screenings just to let people talk about the movie and say they enjoyed the movie.
Michel Hazanavicius
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But sometimes I think you have to try to do things that people don't think are doable.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I love silent cinema but don't hold it sacred. Like any branch of film there are some very boring films alongside the masterpieces.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I'm very happy in France making movies.
Michel Hazanavicius
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An idea is something you work on to make it work and a desire is much deeper in a way.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I guess all the directors in France are influenced by Hitchcock, because he's the perfect visual director, in my eyes.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I only have one obsession - not to be boring.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I watched a lot of movies from all over the world. The Russians were very good at editing. They were specialists in editing. The Man with a Camera, if you know that movie, is incredible. I still don't understand how it works. It's a movie with no script, no actors and still it works. It's really good. It's really about editing.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I thought 'The Artist' was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don't want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything.
Michel Hazanavicius
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French people are strange about America, I think.
Michel Hazanavicius
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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.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I think the writer is always the creator, because he's starting with nothing, but the actor comes in and gives flesh and blood.
Michel Hazanavicius
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Sometimes I think you have to try to do things that people don't think are doable. I remember at the very beginning actually, the first person I had to convince was myself really because there's a self-censorship. When everybody says 'we don't do silent movies anymore,' you agree with everybody, and you say 'yeah, you're right.' It was a fantasy.
Michel Hazanavicius
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The Germans were much more graphical. The expressionism is much more than cinema. It was a movement with artists, painters, music and architecture, so it's really graphic and visual. And the French were something else.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.
Michel Hazanavicius
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All over the world there are a lot of distributors that have the equipment for 3D but they don't have the movies really. The only source of 3D movies is Hollywood. Only Hollywood sends the 3D movies. So it was an option.
Michel Hazanavicius
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Hollywood is much more than America. Hollywood belongs to all of the planet.
Michel Hazanavicius