One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.
—Robert Bresson (b. 1907)
Every obstruction of the course of justice,—is a door opened to betray society, and bereave us of those blessings which it has in view.... It is a strange way of doing honour to God, to screen actions which are a disgrace to humanity.
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
What then is the difference between film and theatre? Or should one not rather ask: what are the differences? Let us be content with the reply that the screen has two dimensions and the stage three, that the screen presents photographs and the stage living actors. All the subtler differences stem from these. The camera can show us all sorts of things—from close-ups of insects to panoramas of prairies—which the stage cannot even suggest, and it can move from one to another with much more dexterity than any conceivable stage. The stage, on the other hand, can be revealed in the unsurpassable beauty of three-dimensional shapes, and the stage actor establishes between himself and his audience a contact real as electricity.
—Eric Bentley (b. 1916)