At its best, film should be like a ski jump. It should give the viewer the option of taking flight, while the act of jumping is left up to him.

I give the spectator the possibility of participating. The audience completes the film by thinking about it; those who watch must not be just consumers ingesting spoon-fed images.

If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them.

People expect me to be dark and gloomy, then write that I'm a jolly chap, and after all, that is what I am. I think it's a case of an absolute romantic naivety that there should be a parallel between the work and the artist.

If you go with the principle, you should go with the principle. If I really saw the subject very differently than ten years ago, I would have done a different movie.

On the set I make jokes I can't get too involved, or it turns into sentimental soup. I try to keep it light.

A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation.