Ernst Lubitsch

Quotes

By Lubitsch:

"At least twice a day the most dignified human being is ridiculous."

"I let the audience use their imaginations. Can I help it if they misconstrue my suggestions?"

"There is Paramount Paris and Metro Paris, and of course the real Paris. Paramount's is the most Parisian of all."

"I don't believe in reproducing a play on the screen exactly as it was done on the stage. Anyone can make a carbon copy. Carbons are always dull."

"I think I am possessed only of a fascination for the work I have chosen to do . . . I am so engrossed by the production of a film that I literally think of nothing else. I have no hobby, no outside interests and want none."

"I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I write and I understand."

"I sometimes make pictures which are not up to my standard, but then it can only be said of a mediocrity that all his work is up to his standard."

"In Hollywood we acquire the finest novels in order to smell the leather bindings."

"Nobody should try to play comedy unless they have a circus going on inside."

"There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one."


On Lubitsch:

"None of us thought we were making anything but entertainment for the moment. Only Ernst Lubitsch knew we were making art." -- John Ford

"A man of pure cinema." -- Alfred Hitchcock

"I worshipped him. I admired his work enormously. He went head and shoulders beyond everyone in the field of sophisticated high comedy. -- Joseph Mankiewicz

"In that Golden Age of Hollywood that everybody's always talking about there were only two directors whose names meant anything to the public and critics: Cecil B. DeMille and Ernst Lubitsch." -- Claudette Colbert

"Lubitsch was a prince." -- Francois Truffaut

"Lubitsch was cerebrally way beyond the ordinary director." -- J.J. Cohn

"I loved Lubitsch, mainly for his tremendous desire to make something funny with class . . .
It was strange -- he really should have been a Frenchman." -- Edgar G. Ulmer

"He was the only great director out there. Ninotchka was the only time I had a great director in Hollywood. -- Greta Garbo

"Lubitsch was a giant . . . his talent and originality were stupefying." -- Orson Welles

"He could do more to show the grace and humor of sex in a nonlustful way than any other director I've ever heard of." -- Charles Chaplin

"Lubitsch had the greatest sense of humor of any individual I've ever met. The actors all loved him. He had a very . . . human quality about him. He was the type of man that became your friend after you met him once. A great man." -- Joseph M. Newman

"He was an imaginative, perceptive, mischievous and an altogether brilliant director."
-- Melvyn Douglas

"Lubitsch towered above anybody, creatively, that I met in Hollywood . . he was the greatest craftsman who ever lived . . . in the sense of knowing the most brilliant and original way to use the medium." -- Samson Raphaelson

"His life was an uninterrupted ribbon of film." -- Unnamed Friend

"Ernst Lubitsch was the complete architect of motion pictures. His stamp was on every frame of film -- from conception to delivery. For high style, romantic comedies and spicy musicals he set a standard that has not been equaled. The Lubitsch 'touch' was unique."
-- Frank Capra

"Ernst Lubitsch was truly the auteur of his films. He created a style of sophisticated comedy peculiarly his own, as well as a new style of musical, both unknown before his time. His films bore the recognizable and indelible stamp of the gay, clever, witty, mischevious master, whose delightful personality matched his work. I am proud to have known his as a friend and teacher. Lubitsch's films were truly Lubitsch's, possessive credit intended."
-- William Wyler

"His films were loaded with a kind of wit which was specifically the essence of the intellectual Berlin in those days. This man was so strong that when he was asked by Hollywood to work there, he not only didn't lose his Berlin style but he converted the Hollywood industry to his own way of expression." -- Jean Renoir



Información sobre Lubitsch:
http://www.lubitsch.com/