Imagine that we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. In an instant the room we are sitting in is completely altered; everything in it has taken on another look; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed and the objects are as we conceive them. That is the effect I want to get in my film.
Interpretation
Our perception alters reality, transforming how we perceive our surroundings.
In this quote, Carl Theodor Dreyer illustrates the profound impact that knowledge and perception have on our experience of reality. The idea that merely being informed of a hidden corpse can change our perception of an ordinary room highlights how our minds shape the significance of objects and environments around us, which is a vital principle in filmmaking and storytelling.
In practice
A filmmaker might reference this quote when discussing the importance of atmosphere in creating tension.
Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.
Artists of all times are like the gamblers of Monte Carlo, and this blind lottery allows some to succeed and ruins others. In my opinion, neither the winners nor the losers are worth worrying about.
Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.
New Orleans cats don't play a lot of solos unless they got something to say. It's not an ego thing like it is with some other musicians. You say what you gotta say and then shut up.
I am not the kind of director who sits in a chair smoking a cigar talking with a microphone to 10 assistants. I need to move. To touch. To put a painting on a wall. To arrange a set.
Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.
People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
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