film-directors-from-poland

"Restless rains ruffled the orchard, And we've been in this war for quite a few years. We'll go home, we'll light the stove, We'll feed the dog. We will make it before nightfall, only we will win, And this is an important game."

"And I fell in love so terribly that, for example, I asked him to dance. It was the song "When I dance with you, the world smiles" and he turned me down. I immediately decided to commit suicide. And I remember that I decided to poison myself with gas. I let off the gas and decided to say goodbye to life. And then my mother called out "Agnieszka" or "Agusiu, soup on the table." And I moaned with the dying voice of a siren: "What soup?" And I heard from the kitchen: "Tomato soup." I decided to eat one more meal before I died and somehow this soup strengthened me so much that I am still alive today."

"And I prefer my mother, who has hair like ink, golden eyes like my teddy bear, and she cried this morning."

"But I wonder why I was wandering around like that. Instead of celebrating love, instead of gushing about it, I was so nervous because I thought that I would just make it, that I would always be young, that Marek would always be young, that the world would wait for us. And nothing waited and the world was rushing at a dizzying pace."

"Long live the ball, because this life is a ball above all balls, long live the ball, they won't invite us a second time, the orchestra is playing, they are still dancing and the doors are open, the day is worth the day and this life is worth the effort!"

"Directing TV series was an instructive experience for me at first, but it became a destructive one after a while. Today, good writers prefer working in TV rather than movies, so you’ll find better and sharper writing there. But most series are conventional: the storytelling has to be efficient, and the dramaturgy is always the same—the end of the last act is intended to hook you into watching the next episode. And for me, [directing series] means losing the innocence you need to make films, a process in which you don’t know what tools you may discover along the way to move the story forward."

"If there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world which divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things which unite people. It doesn't matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine, it's still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together, because the word "love" has the same meaning for everybody. Or "fear", or "suffering". We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way. That's why I tell about these things, because in all other things I immediately find division."

"I don't make biographical films … None of the films is about me. Not a single one. None. I have my life and I'll simply never tell anyone what part of me is in my films. I won't ever tell anyone about that, because I don't consider that to be anyone else's business but mine. Nobody will guess where and how and in what way I fill them with my own pains. And that's an intimate aspect of my work that I keep to myself. … I won't even tell my wife — ever."

"Having followed Kieslowski around Oxford for a day, heard him speak twice, and interviewed him in private, I still find myself in search of the Kieslowski whose name appears at the beginning of some of the most remarkable films in our otherwise cinematically uninspired age. Kieslowski's rise from relative obscurity, to being universally recognised among the ranks of the world's most gifted living film-makers, was meteoric. … Listening to Kieslowski, one is struck by his self-professed lack of faith in the medium with which he has come to address what many hold to be the spiritual malaise of our times. He has become known as someone who finds redemption in our common humanity. In particular, he bemoans the camera as a "stupid" instrument, which, unlike the novel, "cannot show a character's inner feelings." Asked halfway through the Union speaker meeting whether he even likes films, Kieslowski deadpans "No". When questioned as to his greatest cinematic inspirations, he replies: "Life and Literature." As for Hollywood directors whom he admires, he thinks long before coming up with Chaplin and Hitchcock."

"I am always reluctant to single out some particular feature of the work of a major filmmaker because it tends inevitably to simplify and reduce the work. But in this book of screenplays by Krzysztof Kieślowski and his co-author, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, it should not be out of place to observe that they have the very rare ability to dramatize their ideas rather than just talking about them. By making their points through the dramatic action of the story they gain the added power of allowing the audience to discover what's really going on rather than being told. They do this with such dazzling skill, you never see the ideas coming and don't realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart."

"I never made a film which fully satisfied me."

"I want people to go to the movies. I am the man of the spectacle. I'm playing."

"People like Truffaut, Lelouch and Godard are like little kids playing at being revolutionaries. I've passed through this stage. I lived in a country where these things happened seriously."

"In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent."

"I can only say that whatever my life and work have been, I'm not envious of anyone — and this is my biggest satisfaction."

"‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. She said her asthma was playing her up.… She was wheezing quite audibly by now. She picked up my towel and said, ‘I’d better rest awhile; otherwise I might pass out.’"

"We dried ourselves and each other. She said she was feeling better. Then, very gently, I began to kiss and caress her. After this had gone on for some time, I led her over to the couch."

"There was no doubt about Sandra's experience and lack of inhibition. She spread herself and I entered her. She wasn't unresponsive. Yet, when I asked her softly if she was liking it, she resorted to her favorite expression: ‘It’s all right.’"

"If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children."

"Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater."

"My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instincts, but in a disciplined way."

"It's already getting more and more difficult to make an ambitious and original film. There are less and less independent producers or independent companies and an increasing number of corporations who are more interested in balance sheets than in artistic achievement. They want to make a killing each time they produce a film. They're only interested in the lowest common denominator because they're trying to reach the widest audience. And you got some kind of entropy. That's the danger; they look more alike, those films. The style is all melting and it all looks the same. Even young directors — for most of them, their only standard of achievement is how well their films do on the first weekend or whatever. It worries me. But then, from time to time, you have a film like The Usual Suspects or.... I'm trying to think of something American with some kind of originality... Pulp Fiction."

"You know, whenever you do something new and original, people run to see it because it's different. Then, if it happens to be successful, the studios rush to imitate it. It becomes commonplace right away. But it's been like that before, I think. Now, the stakes are so gigantic that they cut each other's throats. So if most of the films are failures, then those that succeed so spectacularly, so commercially, become the norm. It's like a roulette for the studios. The problem with it is that it becomes more and more of a committee. Before, you dealt with the studio. It had one or two persons and now you have masses of executives who have to justify their existence and write so-called "creative notes" and have creative meetings. They obsess about the word creative probably because they aren't."

"Berlin was great. It’s a new generation. If you continue to hate, you are entering into the same philosophy that began the war. You have to look forward at people and new times."

"Whenever I get happy, I always have a terrible feeling."

"33 years ago I pleaded guilty, and I served time at the prison for common law crimes at Chino, not in a VIP prison. That period was to have covered the totality of my sentence. By the time I left prison, the judge had changed his mind and claimed that the time served at Chino did not fulfil the entire sentence, and it is this reversal that justified my leaving the United States."

"Michael, I know she’s a nice girl. She’s too bloody nice. She's supposed to be playing a bitch. Every day I have to make her into a bitch."

"Gunson added that it was false to claim, as the present district attorney’s office does in their request for my extradition, that the time I spent in Chino was for the purpose of a diagnostic study."

"Oh, the little man wanted me—Roman Polanski. Very dwarfish creature with a high giggle. After a take, he wouldn't say, "Cut." One would just hear a "Tee hee hee." [...] Roman presented everything in [such] a calm, matter-of-fact way that the creeping terror just builds. It's sheer genius on his part. It's a very quiet movie where a door creaking can unnerve one. There's a lot of dark comedy in there, too. he was a very careful director—explained everything, multiple takes, very demanding, very appreciative when one got it right. Loved to talk old movies with me."

"The probation officers quoted a pair of psychiatrists as saying that Mr. Polanski was not “a pedophile” or a “sexual deviate.”"

"I would rather live in a country where children are protected and their predators prosecuted, and even (which in Hollywood is evidently not always the same thing) disapproved of."

"He sees things from every point of view. He's an extraordinarily hard worker. I think he's worked for a long time, in every field. He's talented, passionate and has had an incredibly hard and full life that I'm sure you know about. I can not imagine myself having some of his experiences. You either swim or drown, but some like him go on and make every moment important. I think that's what he does."

"On February 26 last, Roger Gunson, the deputy district attorney in charge of the case in 1977, now retired, testified under oath before Judge Mary Lou Villar in the presence of David Walgren, the present deputy district attorney in charge of the case, who was at liberty to contradict and question him, that on September 16, 1977, Judge Rittenband stated to all the parties concerned that my term of imprisonment in Chino constituted the totality of the sentence I would have to serve."

"It's weird. I always had the premonition that Sharon belonged to me just for a little while."

"She was the least hypocritical woman you could ever meet: once, when an executive told her that we should ask for single cabins in the transatlantic that brought us to the United States, she simply said, "Why? Everybody knows that we live together.""

"I'm forced to mix with people of this industry and I can swear that is really difficult to meet people with her nature and her spirit. Generally, everybody is opportunistic here. Sharon had grace and charm; she knew how to make anybody's life easier. When somebody was busy, she was there in a discreet manner to serve you a drink or a coffee."

"Without her I feel lost, I can't explain this in words. However there are things that I just can't stand thinking of; the way she and our son died."

"I don't know that you can speak of shock … Nothing is too shocking for me. I don't really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don't, it's like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line."

"I see Macbeth as a young, open-faced warrior, who is gradually sucked into a whirpool of events because of his ambition. When he meets the weird sisters and hears their prophecy, he's like the man who hopes to win a million — a gamble for high stakes."

"It's easy to direct while acting — there’s one less person to argue with."

"If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!"

"You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity."