Quotes

We have forsaken the magic of the cinema. We have gotten too far away from the cinematic effects achievable by camera angles and creative editing.

The most important critic is time.

You can have all the philosophy you like: if a film doesn't come across in graphic terms, it falls short.

[on CinemaScope] The worst shape ever devised.

I visualize a whole film before I come to the set and then I try to match it.

I think that anybody - and I'm not exaggerating - is capable of giving one hell of a good performance.

Realism and naturalism are not for me. I think it's too feeble an instrument.

Improvisation is for the birds and the amateurs.

I consider that color on the screen must be used as an emotion.

[on casting Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)] I don't want Hyde to be a monster, Hyde is not evil, he is the primitive, the animal in us, whereas Jekyll is a cultured man, representing the intellect. Hyde is the Neanderthal man and [Fredric March's] makeup was designed as such.

It was touching to see how Ira Gershwin, while singing, would become so overwhelmed with admiration for his brother [George Gershwin] that he would look from him to me with half-open eyes and pantomime with a soft gesture of his hand, as if saying,"He did it. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't HE wonderful?".

[on the improvisations George Gershwin brought to music] George at the piano was George happy. He would draw a lovely melody out of the keyboard like a golden thread, then he would play with it and juggle it, twist it and toss it around mischievously, weave it into unexpected patterns, tie it in knots and untie it and hurl it into a cascade of ever-changing rhythms and counterpoints. George at the piano was like a gay sorcerer celebrating his Sabbath.

[interviewed in 1966]: The screen is the most powerful, exciting and contemporary medium. One of these days, we will learn to do it full justice.

[on Miriam Hopkins] An inveterate scene stealer, but after a few days she realized I wouldn't allow it and she behaved. She was superb, but you had to control her.