Quotes

After my first film, The Dove on the Roof, was banned, my second film was canceled a month before shooting began. The studio management then asked me to make the fairy-tale film The Blue Light-in other words, something absolutely "unthreatening"-to show that I was good at my job. In the meantime, rumors were circulating that I was incapable of making a film, something that people liked to believe about novice directors, especially a woman novice. For this reason, I agreed.

The influence of Italian neorealism on my generation was very strong because we ourselves had the need to tell real-life stories that reflected our own experiences, about people we knew, and all as realistically as possible. So: out of the studio and the artificial world, out into natural interiors and onto the streets.... Had there been no Italian neorealism, it would have nevertheless emerged in some other place. It was not imitation; rather, it met a general need of our time, as did the Nouvelle Vague, which continued in the same direction.