Just go to Disneyland. You have the impact of how the Americans think, how they dream, what they desire, how they have a good time, what they prefer. I associate this with young people. But many times I think this infantile quality is much better than the false, incomplete concept of adulthood.

I think even in American schools, they must be studying in a specialized manner.

I think women have always been considered objects, especially in the genre of westerns.

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.

We're talking a very cultivated people, but I found as cultivated as they were, they were uninformed about the personages who weren't American. They knew everything about America, but much less about other countries.

From Ennio [Morricone] I ask for themes that clothe my characters easily. He's never read a script of mine to compose the music, because many times he's composed the music before the script is ever written.

I've tried to consider stories that I have read, making them into films, but they would turn out unnatural. If a producer wants that, he should call other people. Not me.