I consciously chose a person like the bounty killer [of the Fistful trilogy] because he was the street sweeper of the desert, a man who put his life at risk exclusively for the money. I'm not saying that he went against the law, but he put himself within the wings of the law only when it was something that he could profit by.

I consciously chose a person like the bounty killer [of the Fistful trilogy] because he was the street sweeper of the desert, a man who put his life at risk exclusively for the money. I'm not saying that he went against the law, but he put himself within the wings of the law only when it was something that he could profit by.

The important thing is to make a different world, to make a world that is not now. A real world, a genuine world, but one that allows myth to live. The myth is everything.

It's a little hard to avoid putting both war and politics in, in that they both come into the activity, but on their own. My basic idea is to do a great love film set in the hell of 1942. At that moment, hell was Leningrad. Underneath all this, of course, is a film about dissension between the two most important countries in the world, the United States and the Soviet Union. I think it is a must at this point to talk about cooperation instead of the rancor and hatred and competition between nations.

I think politics should be expressed in this way and not in other ways. And not just politics - sentiments, even certain states of being.

Especially in gangster films, with the gangster's moll - she would always be more or less of an object. And I'm not convinced of this theory. Because I think even gangsters' women have brains. They think and even, as we say, have balls.

I didn't want [actress] just to be a woman standing at the window, waving hello and goodbye to men as they came and went in the world that they were struggling through. I wanted her to have a true function.