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.
Art is not ideology. It is completely impossible to explain art on the basis of the homological relation that it is supposed to maintain with the real of history. The aesthetic process decentres the specular relation with which ideology perpetuates its closed infinity. The aesthetic effect is certainly imaginary; but this imaginary is not the reflection of the real, since it is the real of this reflection.
Drawing is a means of obtaining and communicating knowledge
Feathers shall raise men even as they do birds towards heaven :- That is by letters written with their quills.
I'd rather make a show 100 people need to see, than a show that 1000 people want to see.
Even after I became involved in theater and involved in TV and film, I had this sort of idea that Hollywood was off limits. There was something about L.A., the mystique of it and fear of it.
When writing, I'm not thinking about war, even if I'm writing about it. I'm thinking about sentences, rhythm and story. So the focus, when I'm working, even if it's on a story that takes place at war, is not on bombs or bullets. It's on the story.
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