There were two sides to David Lean: on the one side, he was kind of a rather stiff, disciplined Englishman. And then he had this kind of romantic side to him. I think being true to both sides of your nature is important.

The resistance to black-and-white is huge, in the way that you have to sell the film. It's difficult to distribute around the world.

And you poor creatures--who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?

Black-and-white gives you that sort of parallel world. Also, it's very close to the condition of dreaming, to the unconscious.

It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film.

The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead.

There's always been this strand of filmmaking in Britain which is like socialist neo-realism. That's always been there. I've never been part of that, really; I've been much closer to fantasy.