Quotes from Bernardo Bertolucci

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.

I like that 3D is based on the fact that you look with two eyes, so two cameras imitate that.

I like to be in a huis clos, as the French say - in one place. It's something that in general can create a bit of claustrophobia. But for me, claustrophobia becomes almost immediately claustrophilia. I love it!

To explore technology for me is something that I have to do. Otherwise, I feel completely left in the back... abandoned.

Sometimes I think that I understand my movies after I make them. Really. I go very often off of instinct.

After many, many years, I fell out of love with politics. It's not something I like but it's the truth.

English dialogue is the best in the world. So dry and direct. The Italian language is beautiful, but it is too literary.

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

'Dreamers' was because I really wanted to go back after I heard so much nonsense about '68. I wanted to go back to what for me was '68, when young people thought that they could change the world.

I like being able to see an innocence in people. I see a lot of beauty in youth. Young people are in progress. Their faces and bodies and minds are constantly changing. It's exciting to capture that on film.

A name? Oh, Jesus Christ. Ah, God, I've been called by a million names all my life. I don't want a name. I'm better off with a grunt or a groan for a name.

I am in love with the idea of doing a movie in 3D. I think 3D would be great for the story I want to do, in a realistic, normal story, using 3D on the emotions in a kind of intimate story.

I don't see my movies. When you ask me about one of my movies, it just goes in my memory because maybe sometimes I confuse one for another. I think all movies are like sequences, which is the body of my work.

The conformist understands that the reason of his desperate look for conformism is that he realises he is different and that he never accepted his difference.

I make movies in order to make things understood, not to be shocking.

The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life.

What always made me proud - almost blushing with pride - is that Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg all told me that 'The Conformist' is their first modern influence.

What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution. I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. 'The Dreamers' was a total homage to cinema and that love for it.

I haven't made a movie for a while, but I've watched a lot. It's my major waste of time. I like to work, but also to be waiting for work.

For American filmmakers, the Oscars is like a mystic thing. For me, it was being in a mirror of my dreams when I was dreaming of Hollywood when I was an adolescent.

To explore technology for me is something that I have to do. Otherwise, I feel completely left in the back... abandoned.

New York has always embraced me.

I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.