I think the great artists (..) have always thought with the heart.

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

Yes, I was hired by Universal because they needed a comedy director. They had seen Scandal and liked it. I saw an opportunity even in those comedies to begin my project of American films.

I worked for UFA as a set designer, you know.

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

My idea at this time, which was slowly developing, was to create a comedie humaine with little people, average people - samples from every period in American life.

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.