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
Douglas Sirk quotes about
character innocence innocent
Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.
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.
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
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.
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.
meaningful promise world
These happy endings all express the weak and sly promise that the world is not rotten and out of joint but meaningful and ultimately in excellent condition.
designer knows
I worked for UFA as a set designer, you know.
home people
I considered that the homes that people live in exactly describe their lives.