Top 35 Michel Hazanavicius Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “French cinema audiences usually don’t express anything. Certainly not satisfaction.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

2. “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

3. “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

4. “When you’re with your wife, you don’t say I love you to your wife every day but the ways you look at her and your actions are another way to communicate. Don’t focus on dialogue, only focus on what you’re expressing.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

5. “But sometimes I think you have to try to do things that people don’t think are doable.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

6. “I want to thank three persons, I want to thank Billy Wilder, I want to thank Billy Wilder and I want to thank Billy Wilder.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

7. “Bernard Herrmann was a genius, a great, great composer.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

8. “Sometimes when an actor says something almost perfect, but you know you have to edit it, if you tell them to change something immediately, it will come out great.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

9. “They said ‘if you have a 3D movie, we’ll buy it’ because they want it. For maybe two weeks I really thought of a silent, black and white 3D movie and I thought it could be great. I imagined it as a very special image, a very new image, but fortunately, I didn’t have to do it.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

10. “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.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

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11. “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

12. “There are two kinds of audiences. There’s the ones who were in the theaters, and the ones who are outside and we want them to come inside the theater. And, it’s not the same.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

13. “It’s just incredible. When you’re French, coming from a non-English language country, you don’t even dream about Oscar recognition or nominations. It’s just beyond the dream. It’s something very, very special and unique. It’s the highest recognition any filmmaker could dream of.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

14. “The fact that I made a special movie with an old-fashioned style – even if it’s a mix between with modern and old-fashioned things – must mean I feel both ways about change. In a way I’m resisting, but in a way adapting myself to the times.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

15. “Hollywood is much more than America. Hollywood belongs to all of the planet.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

16. “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

17. “I think Hollywood is cleverer than you think. I’m not sure they will do it. I don’t think so, but maybe I’m wrong. When we were doing the preparation of the movie, we didn’t have all the money so we were looking for all the solutions possible, and 3D was one option.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

18. “There’s always been a struggle with filmmakers between art and industry, and you have to find a balance.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

19. “I think we are at the very beginning of high changes, not only in terms of digital film, but in the way the movies will be screened, whether they’ll be screened on phones, on computers – on everything.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

20. “When you do not have the dialogue to explain things, you will use everything to show and to tell the story. I think that this is what makes you believe that it is impeccable.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

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21. “French people are strange about America, I think.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

22. “I only have one obsession – not to be boring.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

23. “This is the problem with language, and this is what makes silent movies fun, because the connection with them, me or the audience is not with the language. There’s no question of interpretation of what we are saying it’s just about feeling. You create your own story.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

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24. “I am unusual for a Frenchman – I have absolutely nothing against the United States.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

25. “I think there’s something in common with the OSS 117 movies. The big difference is there’s no irony in this one. It’s not parody. I tried to make it very simple. It’s a simple story, but to be simple, it’s very complex in the way it’s done.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

26. “To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it’s for them.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

27. “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

28. “Sure, I watched a lot of Hollywood movies. Maybe I’ve seen more Hollywood movies than French movies.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

29. “I’m very happy in France making movies.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

30. “I think being a foreigner and talking about Hollywood allowed me to use some cliches and some references that an American would maybe not use.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

31. “I make almost all the decisions on set and have to deal with all the financial aspects.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

32. “But I don’t think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I’m French or Australian or whatever, it’s really not important.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

33. “When you look at the early-’30s movies, like King Kong, the codes of acting are very similar to those of silent movies. In some of the silent movies – the good ones, the ones done by the best directors – the acting is very, very natural.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

34. “An idea is something you work on to make it work and a desire is much deeper in a way.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

35. “I guess George Clooney would be a wonderful silent actor, and Leonardo DiCaprio is such a wonderful actor he certainly could do it.”

— Michel Hazanavicius

36. “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

37. “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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