"I think we are at the very beginning of high changes, not only in terms of digital film, but in the way the movies will be screened, whether they'll be screened on phones, on computers - on everything"
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Hazanavicius is staking out a director's-eye view of an industry mid-earthquake: the technology is changing, but the real tremor is about where power sits. By pairing "digital film" with the question of where movies "will be screened", he quietly demotes the romantic idea of cinema as a sacred place and elevates cinema as a mutable file that travels. The repetition of "screened" matters: he's not talking about making different kinds of stories yet, he's talking about exhibition as destiny. Whoever owns the screens owns the future.
The phrasing is tellingly tentative - "I think", "whether they'll" - because the moment he's describing is defined by uncertainty. But the prediction is confident in its direction: fragmentation. "Phones, computers - on everything" isn't just a list, it's a shrug at the collapsing hierarchy of venues. The big screen stops being the default; it's just one option in a menu. That shift has consequences directors feel in their bones: framing, pacing, sound, even the kind of attention a scene can demand when it's competing with notifications.
Context sharpens the irony. Hazanavicius is best known for The Artist, a love letter to old Hollywood made right as the digital transition was cementing itself. Coming from him, this isn't tech boosterism; it's an elegiac acknowledgment that cinema's prestige used to be built into its architecture. Now it has to be earned on whatever rectangle the viewer happens to have.
The phrasing is tellingly tentative - "I think", "whether they'll" - because the moment he's describing is defined by uncertainty. But the prediction is confident in its direction: fragmentation. "Phones, computers - on everything" isn't just a list, it's a shrug at the collapsing hierarchy of venues. The big screen stops being the default; it's just one option in a menu. That shift has consequences directors feel in their bones: framing, pacing, sound, even the kind of attention a scene can demand when it's competing with notifications.
Context sharpens the irony. Hazanavicius is best known for The Artist, a love letter to old Hollywood made right as the digital transition was cementing itself. Coming from him, this isn't tech boosterism; it's an elegiac acknowledgment that cinema's prestige used to be built into its architecture. Now it has to be earned on whatever rectangle the viewer happens to have.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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