The French have got to understand that a film is so expensive that it can no longer afford to be regional or even national in scope.

If you make a movie about Elizabeth I, how much of the dialogue is her real words? Audiences know when they go see a movie that it is fiction.

The art of motion pictures is pictorial and language comes a distant second.

War scenes are less difficult than love scenes.

I make movies just as painters paint: I work where I can.

When Picasso painted in Paris, was he a Spanish or a French painter? It does not matter, he was Picasso, whatever the influences surrounding him. He simply chose Paris because it was the ideal place for him to sell his creation.

America is the only country capable of producing national movies: its culture has become a global culture.