With silent films, you're better off avoiding irony, because the spectator is your accomplice. It's this pact that leads to emotion being created.
Some people probably think me telling Godard's story is blasphemy. My friends were worried. But he's not my hero or my god. Godard is like the leader of a sect, and I'm an agnostic.
To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it's for them.
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.
But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director.
I am unusual for a Frenchman - I have absolutely nothing against the United States.
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.
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.
In France, it's really different the way you live. It's a non-religious country. The public space is not religious; religion is a private thing.
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.
I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling.
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.
I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie.
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.
The silent movie is an emotional cinema: it's sensory; the fact that you don't go through a text brings you back to a basic way of telling a story predicated on the feelings you have created.
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.
I try to respect the rules of the silent movies and I tried to make signification to make sense, and also the crew were very good and the fact that we shot in LA in the real Hollywood, studios and houses. We shot in the bed of Mary Pickford, and you cannot be any more accurate than that, so that helped a lot.
When you speak of silent movies, everyone thinks of Charlie Chaplin first.
I watched a lot of silent movies. It's a very specific way of writing, which is more of a challenge than the directing. You have to describe images. It's easier to shoot them.
Robert DeNiro, who may be the greatest living actor, usually acts in a way which is very stone-faced, like Steve McQueen.
