Yes, I was hired by Universal because they needed a comedy director. They had seen Scandal and liked it. I saw an opportunity even in those comedies to begin my project of American films.

I was making films about American society, and it is true that I never felt at home there, except perhaps when my wife and I lived on a farm in the San Fernando Valley. But I always wanted my characters to be more than cyphers for the failings of their world. And I never had to look too hard to find a part of myself in them

Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.

For a house, somewhere near Los Angeles I found an old church. Very old, no longer used. So we moved the church to the land, and I took off the steeple, and I got my hands dirty.

I worked for UFA as a set designer, you know.

You have to think with the heart.

Throughout my pictures I employ a lighting which is not naturalistic.

This is the dialectic - there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.

I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.

Rock Hudson was not an educated man, but that very beautiful body of his was putty in my hands.

At the time I belonged to the socialist party, and Hitler came to power.

There is a wonderful expression: seeing through a glass darkly. Everything, even life, is inevitably removed from you. You can't reach, or touch, the real. You just see reflections

I considered that the homes that people live in exactly describe their lives.

And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.

There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art.

Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye.

Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.