días de cine (1)

...On the screen one does poetry or one does prose. Usually yo can tell the difference, clearly. Persona and The Seventh Seal are poetry, whereas a John Huston film is usually prose, of a wonderful kind. But once in a while you get a film that looks like prose but it turns out to be poetry, like The Bicycle Thief. It seems so realistic, but it passes beyond that. I don't think that's true of Jean Renoir's films. I don't think that The Grand Illusion or Rules of the Game are poetic. I think they're realistic and fabulous. They are great, great prose, just as Huston's movies are great prose...

Woody Allen (Woody Allen in Woody Allen. In conversation with Stig Björkman)