film-directors-from-germany

"Retakes, a standard procedure on the Hollywood scene, are not desirable in making TV films with audience participation. Dubbed-in laughs are artificial and, consequently, used only in emergencies. Close-ups, another routine step in standard film-making, were discarded since such glamour treatment stood out like a sore thumb."

"Despite the 43 years I've devoted to cinematography, I must admit that I was scarcely prepared for the many problems which were to confront me upon my initial excursion into the realm of television with the I Love Lucy show. Fortunately, this motion picture experience helped to cushion many of the serious problems and aided me in adapting myself to this new medium."

"As I watch television films on my own set I am continually aware that I do not have a complete control of the end results. For there is an engineer in every television station control booth who can change the screen image according to his instructions and depending upon the condition of his equipment. And there are the TV viewers who are their own "engineers." I believe that the time is not too distant when the only engineers will be the technicians who actually create the film that is transmitted. Only when that day arrives will we really have film quality comparable to motion picture standards as we know them today."

"The public acceptance of I Love Lucy and Our Miss Brooks has been a source of great inspiration for me. The challenge has been a real one — one I have found both stimulating and exciting."

"Fight on land and sea All men want to be free If they don't never mind we'll abolish all mankind"

"What's the point of a revolution without general copulation copulation copulation"

"Long ago I abandoned my masterpiece a roll of paper thirty yards long which I filled completely with minute handwriting in my dungeon years ago It vanished when the Bastille fell it vanished as everything written everything thought and planned will disappear"

"What has gone wrong with the men who are ruling I'd like to know who they think they are fooling They told us that torture was over and gone but everyone knows the same torture goes on"

"Don't be deceived when our Revolution has been finally stamped out and they tell you things are better now Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which these new industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you"

"And now Marat now I see where this revolution is heading To the withering of the individual man and a slow merging into uniformity to the death of choice to self denial to deadly weakness in a state which has no contract with individuals but which is impregnable"

"Marat Today they need you because you are going to suffer for them They need you and they honour the urn which holds your ashes Tomorrow they will come back and smash that urn and they will ask Marat who was Marat"

"Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out Neither side is glorious On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing Not to lie under the earth but to walk upon it without crutches"

"Singers: We've got nothing always had nothing nothing but holes and millions of them Kokol: Living in holes Polpoch: Dying in holes Cucurucu: Holes in our bellies Rossignol: and holes in our clothes"

"We're all so clogged with dead ideas passed from generation to generation that even the best of us don't know the way out We invented the Revolution but we don't know how to run it Look everyone wants to keep something from the past a souvenir of the old regime This man decides to keep a painting This one keeps his mistress He [pointing] keeps his garden He [pointing] keeps his estate He keeps his country house He keeps his factories This man couldn't part with his shipyards This one kept his army and that one keeps his king"

"So the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding scourged and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness"

"And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned away their faces and said Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage The soul lives on humility and patience at the same time screwing from the poor their last centime They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said Suffer Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God"

"Against Nature's silence I use action In the vast indifference I invent a meaning I don't watch unmoved I intervene and say that this and this are wrong and I work to alter them and improve them The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes"

"Every death even the cruellest death drowns in the total indifference of Nature Nature herself would watch unmoved if we destroyed the entire human race I hate Nature this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face that can bear everything this goads us to greater and greater acts"

"Don't soil your pretty little shoes The gutter's deep and red Climb up climb up and ride along with me the tumbrel driver saidBut she never said a word never turned her headDon't soil your pretty little pants I only go one way Climb up climb up and ride along with me There's no gold coach todayBut she never said a word never turned her head"

"Charlotte Corday walked alone Paris birds sang sugar calls Charlotte walked down lanes of stone through the haze of perfume stalls Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene Heard the singing guillotine"

"We've got rights the right to starve We've got jobs waiting for work We're all brothers lousy and dirty We're all free and equal to die like dogs"

"Only in his poetry did he have the courage to love."

"I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted. … That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country."

"In Dante the hero would rather flee and renounce the tempting embrace instead of yielding to his desires and enduring the attendant dangers."

"I've twisted and turned them every way, And can see no ending to our play."

"Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits Great propositions and their opposites, See how they work, and let them fight it out, To point some light on our eternal doubt. Marat and I both advocated force But in debate each took a different course. Both wanted changes, but his views and mine On using power never could combine. On the one side, he who thinks our lives Can be improved by axes and knives, Or he who, submerged in the imagination, Seeking a personal annihilation."

"We can say what we like without favour or fear and what we can't say we can breathe in your ear"

"House of the Dead 2 I gave away. Alone in the Dark 2 I will also not do; even if the DVD movie made money. BloodRayne 2 in the Wild West is what I really want to do."

"I totally regret as a German what happened at this point of history. But when people ask me are you, as a German, feel responsible for the Holocaust? No, because I'm born 1965 and it would be completely un-logical to say I'm responsible, but as a country we are responsible."

"Postal is a politically incorrect movie, and also a politically incorrect game. I think if you have a game where you can use a cat as a silencer, you cannot make this as a serious movie. So it must be a funny movie. It should be an absurd comedy...So you see there is a difference between doing something professional, and only talking about it. And all that people there in the Internet, bashing or whatever, they cannot tell a fucking story for 5 minutes."

"There are directors that make one good movie their whole life, but this movie creates a buzz around the director, then they get like forever good reviews. Till someone 20 years later says, look, to be honest I liked only the one movie of that guy. In my case it’s exactly the opposite. I get trashed for whatever I do. They don’t see any difference in what I’m doing."

"We'll be sending a print to the MPAA, we say nothing about it and hope they sleep through the movie."

"As you see, the reactions were really reserved from the studios..."

"This day showed us that we are all completely voyeurs greedy for thrilling entertainment no matter if this is real or not."

"Postal will be so politically incorrect and harsh, it's like a mirror to American society, and I don't think the movie will be well received by anybody. For example, Osama Bin Laden will be one of the lead characters—I think that shows the mood of the movie."

"Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school. But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you have walked alone on foot, let's say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about five thousand kilometres. While walking, write. Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks. I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not. While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking and what it truly involves than you ever would sitting in a classroom. During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion."

"We comprehend... that nuclear power is a real danger for mankind, that over-crowding of the planet is the greatest danger of all. We have understood that the destruction of the environment is another enormous danger. But I truly believe that the lack of adequate imagery is a danger of the same magnitude. It is as serious a defect as being without memory. What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs."

"You can fight a rumour only with an even wilder rumour."

"I am not an artist and never have been. Rather I am like a craftsman and feel very close to the mediaeval artisans who produced their work anonymously and who, along with their apprentices, had a true feeling for the physical materials they were working with."

"I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms."

"I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently."

"May I propose a Herzog dictum? Those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it."

"It is my firm belief, and I say this as a dictum, that all these tools now at our disposal, these things part of this explosive evolution of means of communication, mean we are now heading for an era of solitude. Along with this rapid growth of forms of communication at our disposal— be it fax, phone, email, internet or whatever— human solitude will increase in direct proportion."

"To me, adventure is a concept that applies only to those men and women of earlier historical times, like the mediaeval knights who travelled into the unknown. The concept has degenerated constantly since then... I absolutely loathe adventurers, and I particularly hate this old pseudo-adventurism where the mountain climb becomes about confronting the extremes of humanity."

"If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe."

"Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates."

"People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder."

"Incredible. I didn't know how to calm him down, and then I had an inspiration. I went to my hut, where, for months I had hidden a piece of chocolate. We would almost have killed one another for something like that. I went back to him, going right into his face and ate the chocolate. All of a sudden he was quiet. This was utterly beyond him."

"Often he was a joy, and you know, he was one of the few people I ever learned anything from."

"Werner, nobody will read this book if I don't write bad stuff about you. If I wrote that we get along well together, nobody would buy it. The scum only wants to hear about the dirt, all the time."