Quotes

I will only say that every work of art, even where more than one mind had gone into its shaping, ultimately bears the imprint of a single personality.

[on directing The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)] Although I was sparing with the big individual close-ups, I was tempted in the scene where Edith Evans' voice goes up three octaves on a single syllable when she says the word "hanndb-a-g". On films, as you know, voices haven't need to be raised to reach the back of the gallery. We take care of that, and actors and actresses keep their voices right down. In the case of Lady Bracknell, however, it was different: she is a monster anyway and she is more than life-size, and certainly Edith Evans IS life-size. I didn't try to modify her performance in any way, because it seemed to me to be splendid.

[on Leslie Howard] Leslie Howard was wonderful. He'd come on the set, have a quiet walk-through in rehearsal and then he would repeat a shot again and again--even his eyelashes would be in the same place at any given moment, yet his performance was never mechanical. He had the most wonderfully controlled technique I have ever seen.

In England when you make a movie, even the weather is against you. In Hollywood the weatherman gets a shooting schedule from all the major studios and then figures out where he can fit in a little rain without upsetting Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer too much.