Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirkwas a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth26 April 1897
CountryGermany
average ideas people
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.
art ideas perfection
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.
beauty art ideas
In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is.
america except german-director knew theater
I knew Law, and I knew theater. I didn't, of course, know American law, and in America the theater did not exist, except for Broadway.
art consist effect german-director line straight
Now in theory, if there is no straight line in the universe, this has its effect on art. Art must consist of something bent, something curved.
believe fired german-director producer thunder
Only on Thunder did I have a producer who was interfering with my work. He was the only one at Universal. After that film I believe they fired him.
dirty hands land
For a house, somewhere near Los Angeles I found an old church. Very old, no longer used. So we moved the church to the land, and I took off the steeple, and I got my hands dirty.
art style common
There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art.
character home wife
I was making films about American society, and it is true that I never felt at home there, except perhaps when my wife and I lived on a farm in the San Fernando Valley. But I always wanted my characters to be more than cyphers for the failings of their world. And I never had to look too hard to find a part of myself in them
real reflection expression
There is a wonderful expression: seeing through a glass darkly. Everything, even life, is inevitably removed from you. You can't reach, or touch, the real. You just see reflections
style proud crafts
I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.
gone reason angle
If I can say one thing for my pictures, it is a certain craftsmanship. A thought which has gone into every angle. There is nothing there without an optical reason.
broken-heart thinking heart-broke
You have to think with the heart.
film produce gamble
And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.