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
character innocence innocent
Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.
film produce gamble
And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.
broken-heart thinking heart-broke
You have to think with the heart.
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.
style proud crafts
I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.
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
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
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.
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.
bought came far german-director land piece tiny
When we first came to America, I bought a tiny piece of land far out in the country. But there was no place to live on it, only a shed.
anarchism art became marxism rosa time
At the same time, of course, Marxism arose - Rosa Luxembourg, Leninism, anarchism - and art became political.
art create trying war
The war was the end of an era, in art as well. And we were trying to create a new philosophy.
attended began german-director physical remained remains suggested theory
And it really began with Einstein. We attended his lectures. Now the theory of relativity remained - and still remains - only a theory. It has not been proven. But it suggested a completely different picture of the physical world.
german-director hard
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.