Douglas Sirk Quotes

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.
Douglas Sirk

Happy, Weak, Promise

Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.
Douglas Sirk

Real, America, Why

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.
Douglas Sirk

Mind, Different, American

A director in Hollywood in my time couldn't do what he wanted to do.
Douglas Sirk

Time, Wanted, Hollywood

And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.
Douglas Sirk

Movies, Films, Gamble

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.
Douglas Sirk

Different, Picture, Physical

At the same time, of course, Marxism arose - Rosa Luxembourg, Leninism, anarchism - and art became political.
Douglas Sirk

Time, Art, Political

At the time I belonged to the socialist party, and Hitler came to power.
Douglas Sirk

Time, Power, Party

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.
Douglas Sirk

Hard, Find, Wanted

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.
Douglas Sirk

I considered that the homes that people live in exactly describe their lives.
Douglas Sirk

Live, Lives, Describe

I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.
Douglas Sirk

Proud, Pictures, Style

I think the great artists, especially in literature, have always thought with the heart.
Douglas Sirk

Great, Heart, Thought

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.
Douglas Sirk

Home, Society, True

I worked for UFA as a set designer, you know.
Douglas Sirk

Worked, Designer

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.
Douglas Sirk

Nothing, Thought, Reason

If I couldn't read, I couldn't live.
Douglas Sirk

In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is.
Douglas Sirk

Beauty, Politics, Art

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.
Douglas Sirk

Life, Time, American

Rock Hudson was not an educated man, but that very beautiful body of his was putty in my hands.
Douglas Sirk

Beautiful, Rock, Body

Ross Hunter was my assistant on Take Me to Town, He was a young man, an actor before that, and learned a lot on the picture. During shooting, Goldstein left, and Ross was most pleasant. He never interfered.
Douglas Sirk

Before, Learned, Young

The war was the end of an era, in art as well. And we were trying to create a new philosophy.
Douglas Sirk

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.
Douglas Sirk

Politics, Art, Belief

Throughout my pictures I employ a lighting which is not naturalistic.
Douglas Sirk

Pictures, Lighting, Employ

Yes, I was hired by Universal because they needed a comedy director. They had seen Scandal and liked it. I saw an opportunity even in those comedies to begin my project of American films.
Douglas Sirk

American, Comedy, Seen

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Biography

Nationality: German

Born: April 26, 1897

Died: January 14, 1987

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