Top 45 Alexandre Desplat Quotes

French horn can be very epic, and at the same time, very dark and moving.

Argo’ was a very exciting project for me because I knew that I could mix together influences from my youth as a young musician and a young composer.

I always say that to compose is to think. Playing is good, it’s useful, but it’s how your intellect puts the ideas together that will bring hands to write or to play. So, it’s really a combination of many things; hearing sounds, hearing layers of counterpoints, of chords.

Well I think usually I would do six or even 10 scores a year. Some are big films and some are not.

If I wanted an open space, I could do a documentary about fishes. Then I would have an open space to play my music. That’s not how I visualize the work I’m doing.

When you compose, it’s like writing. You’re like a writer. You just think all the time.

In my early teens, I started collecting soundtrack albums.

I’ve been pretty lucky to work with directors who were quite influenced by European cinema.

I have no favorite museum, but it could be the National Gallery in London; it could be the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Every city has a great museum.

Some directors can become concerned when it comes to music, because it’s the end of the process and they’re tired. They’re worried that the music will intrude or waste something, that a composer will overwhelm the story.

I know ‘Valerian’ didn’t do very well in America, but I think it’s because of the lack of knowledge of these graphic novels which came out in the mid-60s.

On ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ I must insist that the sounds of the instrumentation are crucial to reflect what the movie should convey in terms of energy and emotion. It’s not just the melody or the tune.

It’s not easy to write an understated score over a loud one.

I’m not a script composer. I’m a film composer and my brain is excited by images and moving elements.

Berlin was the first, the very first to give me an award. I am eternally grateful to them. It sits on my desk – the Silver Bear. All the others are stored away. It’s the only one I look at. It watches me while I work.

It could be sci-fi, love story, historical drama what counts for me is the fact that they’re made by great directors with a great point of view who bring the audience to be elevated and at the same time entertained. That’s what cinema is.

I remember when I saw ‘King’s Speech’ or ‘Girl With the Pearl Earring;’ there are moments in my life where I was blown away and thought, ‘Wow, that’s why I chose to be a film composer.’ These films are so beautiful and so strong, and the music can be very much part of the emotion.

When a theme is beautiful, it’s a pleasure to rearrange it or to interweave it with your own music.

I think great scores have to be noticed, but they’re wrong when you hear the music come in.

I don’t know if I would write an opera, maybe because of the words. But yes, I would be really excited to do it. I would certainly write a ballet or… I’ve done a lot of stage before.

My art is applied to another art which is cinema, that makes my life much easier.

When you have the chance to work with Wes Anderson, with Stephen Frears and Chris Weitz and Roman Polanski and Terrance Malick you don’t say no.

You do movies because you love movies and you write music because you love writing music, and sometimes there’s this magic combination.

I played the piccolo in the ‘Ides of March’ and ‘The Fantastic Mr. Fox’ score.

I saw the finished version of ‘The French Dispatch’ quite a while ago, and it’s just amazing. It’s so incredibly strong and different… the way that Wes is expanding his talents to another dimension with each film is just wow.

The goal is to make the music really a part of the skin of the film, and not be detached.

I remember my sisters, they loved a movie called ‘The Naked Island.’ And the flute was actually playing the main theme. A Japanese movie. A beautiful movie from 1961. I remember hearing this music with a flute many, many times a day at home.

Well, I consider myself as much as a filmmaker as a moviegoer.

I always try to do movies that are different from the ones I’ve done before.

In a time when directors did not fear composers with a strong voice, Morricone wrote scores like operas or symphonies, with passion, scope, bravura and intelligence.

That’s the main lesson I’ve learned from working in the theater: respect the dramaturgy. I don’t want to overwhelm everything with music.

I just write from dawn to dusk.

We will always hear the vibrations of Ennio’s music and feel it in our hearts.

I don’t think I would deliver the best work if I would do several projects at the same time. So it’s one at a time, but I work a lot. I work nonstop actually, but that’s what I like.

Because I work so much, people think that I have a team writing for me, but that’s not why I chose to write music for films. I chose to write music because I like to write music. So every single note that comes out of my studio is written by me, and I wouldn’t be able to do two movies at the same time.

I usually like to introduce the film and the music with the opening titles. It’s a great help for a composer to bring the audience into the work that we’re going into.

I’m there to tailor something very precisely and something very subtly to dialogue and the actor’s energy. I’m there to bring out something that isn’t spoken. ‘King’s Speech’ is the perfect film to do it.

It’s not about what’s a good or bad score at the Oscars, rather what’s exposed to the ears more.

I’m being offered great movies by great directors and that’s what I love, that’s what I’ve dreamed to do, and that’s what I do all day long. So I have to do it.

I can’t watch a movie where the actors are great and the photography sucks.

I’ve always been a film lover – that’s why I’ve always wanted to write music for films.

Some films that I love, I love them also because of the music. ‘Vertigo,’ for example, is a movie where the music is doing 70 percent of the job.

I’ve been very lucky early on to be surrounded when I was a child by music from various countries. My parents would listen to a lot of music coming from other universes.

I’ve scored all the movies that Jacques Audiard has directed. It’s a long love story between us, trying to find a voice that would belong to his films only.

I’ve loved Japanese culture for a long, long time, from doing martial arts, to the block prints, to the music. It’s a country that I love, and a culture that I love.