Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.
Alfred HitchcockRead
Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Dialogue serves as a backdrop to the visual storytelling, highlighting the power of non-verbal communication.
In this quote, Hitchcock emphasizes the importance of visual storytelling in film, suggesting that what characters say is less significant than what their expressions and actions convey. He believes that dialogue should blend with the overall soundscape, prioritizing the visual aspects that reveal deeper emotions and narratives.
Themes
DialogueVisual StorytellingCommunicationFilmExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a film studies class when discussing the importance of non-verbal cues in cinematic storytelling.
More from Alfred Hitchcock
All quotes βI can't read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.
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I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
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Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
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There is something more important than logic: imagination
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One must never set up a murder. They must happen unexpectedly, as in life.
Alfred HitchcockRead
Similar quotes
When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?
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Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
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Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then all that ink and labor are wasted because I can't print the results
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My only interest is in sharing great music with more and more people.
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The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.
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