“Like the he-man movie stars who turn out to be queer . . . or the silent-film actors whose voices sound terrible recorded--the audience only wants a limited amount of honesty. [ellipses original]”
“We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday’s films, hear the voices of poest and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls. ”
“Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.”
“THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA(1929) the 'honesty' of documentary as compared with fiction film, the 'perfection' of the cinematic eye compared with human eye.”
“And why did everyone persist in thinking the mute was exactly as they wanted him to be--when most likely it was all a very queer mistake?... In the battling tumult of voices he alone was silent.”
“I would have practically done all my films in 3D. There is something that 3D gives to the picture that takes you into another land and you stay there and it’s a good place to be. (…) It’s like seeing a moving sculpture of the actor and it’s almost like a combination of theater and film combined and it immerses you in the story more. I saw audiences care about the people more. The minute it started people wanted three things: color, sound and depth. You want to recreate life.”