A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.
Mike NicholsRead
You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Talking movies reveal genuine human emotions and interactions.
Mike Nichols highlights how talking films, unlike silent films, allow for a deeper expression of human emotions, capturing spontaneous reactions that reflect the authentic inner life of individuals. This ability to portray unplanned moments makes film a powerful medium for understanding the complexities of human feelings and experiences.
Themes
Talking MoviesInner LifeHuman EmotionsFilmSpontaneity
In practice
Example use cases
During a film study class, this quote could be used to discuss the significance of dialogue in character development.
More from Mike Nichols
All quotes →There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.
Mike NicholsRead
The thing about being an outsider... is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you're constantly looking for the people who just don't give a damn.
Mike NicholsRead
I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.
Mike NicholsRead
Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'
Mike NicholsRead
Things come in waves, and I'm always more interested in places like, for instance, Chicago, where people don't follow fashion. They're not galloping past your window on the way to the latest anything. They're living their lives. You do a play, they come and see it and say, 'That's nice', and then they go home.
Mike NicholsRead
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Music...This is the favorite passion of my soul.
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I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents; I used to believe in every kind of magic. I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
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but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
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