“Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.”

— Werner Herzog

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates." by Werner Herzog?

Werner Herzog 53

German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and ope… 1942

Related quotes

“A scholar … should turn his ears from the talk of the illiterate and not take it to heart.”

Maimónides book Mishneh Torah

Treatise 3: “The Study of the Torah,” H. Russell, trans. (1983), p. 69
Mishneh Torah (c. 1180)

“To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/alan-moore-the-reluctant-hero-64407.html
Context: If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong. To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.

“I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

Source: Cronenberg on Cronenberg (1997), Ch. 4

“Not to know the Bible is, in some ways, to be illiterate, to neglect the very roots of philosophy, art, architecture, literature, poetry and music.”

Chris Hedges book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America

Source: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Chapter One: Faith

“No one component of a film can have any meaning in isolation: it is the film that is the work of art.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

And we can only talk about its components rather arbitrarily, dividing it up artificially or the sake of theoretical discussion.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 114

“The best definition of true imagination is that it is the sum of our faculties. Poetry is the scholar's art.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Necessary Angel (1951), Imagination as Value
Context: The best definition of true imagination is that it is the sum of our faculties. Poetry is the scholar's art. The acute intelligence of the imagination, the illimitable resources of its memory, its power to possess the moment it perceives — if we were speaking of light itself, and thinking of the relationship between objects and light, no further demonstration would be necessary... What light requires a day to do, and by day I mean a kind of Biblical revolution of time, the imagination does in the twinkling of an eye. It colors, increases, brings to a beginning and end, invents languages, crushes men, and, for that matter, gods in its hands, it says to women more than it is possible to say, it rescues all of us from what we have called absolute fact...

“The problem is that Hollywood is competition for Chinese art films. So I thought I should make a film with box office promise, that refers to Chinese culture, but also contains an art element.”

Zhang Yimou (1950) Chinese actor, film director, screenwriter and film producer

"Fighting for Peace (and Art Films), Zhang Yimou on “Hero”" in Indie Wire https://www.indiewire.com/2004/08/fighting-for-peace-and-art-films-zhang-yimou-on-hero-78697/ (27 August 2004)