Concentrated Nonsense (cinema edition)

(5)

“I don’t think a film should impose at all the ideas of the director. He should propose ideas that people can accept or refuse. He shouldn’t impose them, no matter what they are. Even if he wants people to participate in his ideas, he must present them in radically different ways than in commercial films. If he used those same selling methods to sell his so-called beautiful and good ideas, it’s an absurd contradiction, because those methods only hit you on the head, and even if you are hit on the head with the best intentions, it still hurts.

“If I show you an audio-visual object which deafens you or blinds you under the pretext of convincing you of a beautiful and good idea, I can’t even convey the idea to you because it must be perceived by the senses I have just diminished. So, I will succeed only in making you more unconscious.”
– Jean-Marie Straub, as quoted in a profile by Ellen Oumano for Film Forum: Thirty-Five Top Filmmakers Discuss Their Craft [58-59]