Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film.
Interpretation
Film can consume and dominate one's thoughts and emotions, much like a powerful addiction.
In this quote, Frank Capra metaphorically compares film to a disease that overtakes an individual, asserting that its influence can be as profound and consuming as a drug addiction. The use of vivid imagery emphasizes how cinema affects our psyche, suggesting that just as a person addicted to heroin might seek more of the drug as a remedy, a film enthusiast immerses themselves further in films in response to their obsession, thereby illustrating the powerful grip and emotional resonance that cinema can have on a person.
In practice
During a speech at a film festival, one might say, 'As Frank Capra noted, film is a disease that takes hold of us, urging us to seek more cinematic experiences.'
Someone should keep reminding Mr. Average Man that he was born free, divine, strong; uncrushable by fate, society, or hell itself; and that he is a child of God, equal heir to all the bounties of God; and that goodness is riches, kindness is power, and freedom is glory. Above all, every man is born with an inner capacity to take him as far as his imagination can dream or envision-providing he is free to dream and envision.
If You Want to Send a Message, Try Western Union.
In these days of wars and rumors of wars - haven't you ever dreamed of a place where there was peace and security, where living was not a struggle but a lasting delight?
There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness.
The Oscar is the most valuable, but least expensive, item of world-wide public relations ever invented by any industry.
My Advice to Young Filmmakers is This: Don't Follow Trends. Start Them!
There is something like an explosion in the meaning of certain words: they have a greater value than their meaning in the dictionary.
In school I was in the dark room all the time, and I've always collected stray photographs; there's a great deal of memory in them.
I have to be composed; I have to be poised. I have to remember what my first piano teacher told me: 'You do not touch that piano until you are ready and until they are ready to listen to you.
For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.
He was one of the masters of the thriller and he really was one of the great signposts, because he took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul and where it all really happened, ... The Day of the Jackal.
You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.
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