I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.

Throughout my pictures I employ a lighting which is not naturalistic.

Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.

I was making films about American society, and it is true that I never felt at home there, except perhaps when my wife and I lived on a farm in the San Fernando Valley.

Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye.

So slowly in my mind formed the idea of melodrama, a form I found to perfection in American pictures. They were naive, they were that something completely different. They were completely Art-less.