Volker Schlöndorff - Quotes

The shadows projected on the wall of Plato's cave has been the first cinema.
Schlöndorff, Volker.

The camera records that special moment of grace — it may be invisible to the eye but on screen you see it immediately.
Schlöndorff, Volker.

The world is still incomprehensible enough but totally without philosophical concepts it would be unbearable for me.
Schlöndorff, Volker.

Language is not just words: it is lines, melody, poses; and you can feel whether something is right or wrong even in a language you do not speak.
Schlöndorff, Volker.

If you start to spell out a film's meaning it gets lost #8212; the meaning has to remain a secret.
Schlöndorff, Volker.

A definition of the seventh art is not my goal.
Schlöndorff, Volker.

Well, you might want to first draw a distinction between the situation of labor in Eastern and Western Europe. In Western Europe, especially in countries like France and Germany, it’s pretty well organized—almost to the point where it’s considered a hindrance to the economy. The real interesting thing is that in the former “workers’ paradise” in the socialist countries, they weren’t really organized because that State was said to be the union. That’s the whole backbone of this movie—these shipyard workers went on strike to have what they called “free unions.” But the state said that it didn’t make sense in socialism to have free unions because the state was there to defend the worker. It was a truly Kafkaesque situation.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Jeff Reichert (Interviewer). "Solidarity: An Interview with Volker Schlöndorff." in: Reverse Rose. Issue 20. No Date.

If there was no organized labor during the many years of Communism, once the Berlin Wall came down, worse happened. Turbo-capitalism was introduced, meaning kind of a pre-Manchester capitalism without any regulations whatsoever—Communism was over, and the assumption was that in Capitalism anything goes. As a result, the workers are very badly protected in all of these countries.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Jeff Reichert (Interviewer). "Solidarity: An Interview with Volker Schlöndorff." in: Reverse Rose. Issue 20. No Date.

And for this little orphaned worker, who came from the country and found this refuge in the shipyard, it became her home and her family. And that’s why she worked so hard. She received many medals from the party, but she didn’t believe much in Communism. She always told me that she worked so hard for the love of Poland. That’s why I felt it was important to start at this moment when the utopian ideal was still alive, when you believed you could build and that the workers actually had some influence. And with tiny little things, she starts to realize that this wasn’t true. Whether lunches were cold by the time anyone could get a chance to eat them, or the bathrooms were too far away, or there were no bathrooms for women—she protests against this. Not to protest against Communism, but to make it better. That leads her onwards from these tiny little things to the realization that there is no way to reform Communism.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Jeff Reichert (Interviewer). "Solidarity: An Interview with Volker Schlöndorff." in: Reverse Rose. Issue 20. No Date.

That’s the Communist world. We were very careful in researching, and we found out that oftentimes poorer people might wear the same coat for twenty years. Even if the fashion had changed three times!
Schlöndorff, Volker and Jeff Reichert (Interviewer). "Solidarity: An Interview with Volker Schlöndorff." in: Reverse Rose. Issue 20. No Date.

[Q:] Why The Director's Cut now? [A:] When the movie turned out to be a big success in the shorter version, we – of course – did not want to diminish the honours bestowed at Cannes and at the Oscars by letting the world know we thought the film was incomplete. Billy Wilder quite rightly reminded me at the time: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it!'
Schlöndorff, Volker. "Volker Schlöndorff on The Director's Cut." in: Blu-Ray Forum. June 11, 2010.

Last summer, I was asked whether the lab storing the negatives of unused footage should renew our space rental agreement or dispose of the material. The question instantly piqued my interest in seeing how the material we left out could work nowadays; and I went to work right away to find out. First of all, we discovered images of impressive quality: maiden‐like negatives, which had never been touched by a single hand since the reel had been taken out off the camera 30 years earlier. I turned to my working script, where I had made notes and comments on every single set up and shot. That document helped shape my pre‐selection and sorting out of the raw material.
Schlöndorff, Volker. "Volker Schlöndorff on The Director's Cut." in: Blu-Ray Forum. June 11, 2010.

To give today’s audience a better understanding of the period, I used old newsreels as “time markers.” The movie is not only about the little big Oskar it is about contemporary history too. In line with the book, the film is an epic.
Schlöndorff, Volker. "Volker Schlöndorff on The Director's Cut." in: Blu-Ray Forum. June 11, 2010.

I am really glad that I finally had the chance to rework the movie and to complement it. Of course, I had to polish up some minor flaws for the Director's Cut, but, in the end, we did not want a totally different movie; we wanted to produce the real one ‐ the complete one ‐ the one we shot back then. It will be exciting to see which of the two versions will become definitive in the long run.
Schlöndorff, Volker. "Volker Schlöndorff on The Director's Cut." in: Blu-Ray Forum. June 11, 2010.

The American civilization had more to offer us than our German heritage.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Peter Craven (Interviewer). "Volker Schlöndorff, Oscar Winning Film Director." in: DW World. April 26, 2009. (English).

I wasn't sure the movie would travel, for example, whether you needed the geographical, political background, down to the nitty gritty, like which is the East Berlin airport, which is the West Berlin airport -- things like that. Nobody understood which was where, but they got the picture even better. They followed the human touch in the story, which is really the way we tried to tell the story, as if it was a fiction. Because I didn't want to deal with all the facts, the documentary part of it. Even though everything's authentic ... The protagonist is an invention, taken from different sources.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Anthony Kaufman (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Indie Wire. January 31, 2001. (English).

I'm uneasy with this word, "docu-drama." Because either you make a documentary or you make a drama. And that's why we didn't put the disclaimer, "Based on a True Story," because usually when I see that, I think it's basically full of lies.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Anthony Kaufman (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Indie Wire. January 31, 2001. (English).

This is from Goethe, one of our great writers. One of his major biographical works is called "Fiction and Truth." And basically, he says, "This is exactly how it was, more or less." Which means basically you can't replicate reality in a piece of fiction. The moment you use actors and put them in front of the camera, you're making a movie. The canvas of the story, that comes from reality, and you have a number of wonderful details, like they barbacue sausages, or she gives too much money to Nicaragua, these kinds of details. We had a number of these, how shall we say, cookies on the shelf, and every once in a while, we put one into the scene there, but basically, we wrote it like a screenplay.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Anthony Kaufman (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Indie Wire. January 31, 2001. (English).

I'm interested in history, of course, and I'm interested in politics. So I have to put my passion and wrap it in chocolate somehow, so people don't see that they are swallowing a historical pill.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Anthony Kaufman (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Indie Wire. January 31, 2001. (English).

In a filmmaker's career, you get to make bigger and bigger films; somehow, they entrust you with more and more stuff. And then in the end, things get stiffer and stiffer. The apparatus takes over. Since nobody but me wanted to make this movie, and I only had little money, I could liberate myself. But then my condition was also, let's not talk big actors into doing it for scale, but let me do with it unknown faces. And then, it wasn't planned that it would be handheld; that happened on the set as we moved on, to get closer to the characters. It's like what Dogme does with the digital camera, but you can still do that with an old film camera.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Anthony Kaufman (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Indie Wire. January 31, 2001. (English).

For me, it's like a feeling of starting over, or coming back to do things you were once good at. It was easy to make, because everybody worked for the same thing, and the actors had plenty of time for rehearsal -- three weeks before we even started -- because they were all unemployed young actors. This was all very alien to them: young people who would sacrifice everything for a political idea doesn't happen that much now.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Anthony Kaufman (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Indie Wire. January 31, 2001. (English).

Every new generation reinvents things on their own. Most of the films now are by young filmmakers, and I can certify that they've never seen my movies, except for maybe "The Tin Drum," nor any from my contemporaries, but they are reinventing things like the way we did when we started.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Anthony Kaufman (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Indie Wire. January 31, 2001. (English).

And one of the first stories I came upon was in the newspapers, about eleven West German terrorists arrested in East Germany where they had been in hiding with the help of the Stasi [East Germany secret police]. So I felt, that's a story to tell. How did they survive say, to live the life of the working classes. And what would motivate a young West German woman of anarchic character to go to the East. But at the time, nobody wanted to do the story. It was all too recent. So now, ten years later with the historical perspective, all of a sudden the funding was there.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Prairie Miller (Interviewer). "An Interview with German Filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff." in: World Socialist Website. February 3, 2001.

First there is this very idealistic character who loses touch with reality, and she in a sense becomes a fanatic. But mostly because at the time, we had these two systems in Berlin. Half the city was capitalist, and the other half was socialist. And you could just take the subway and move from one system to the other. Which was a great escape for them. When they robbed a bank in the West, they just jumped into the subway and up they were in the socialist East, home free.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Prairie Miller (Interviewer). "An Interview with German Filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff." in: World Socialist Website. February 3, 2001.

I have a sympathy for rebellious characters. Their politics were wrong, terrorism didn't lead anywhere ... So I identify with Rita in her rebelliousness, and her openness towards other people. Yes, she's really someone that I care for very much. And I still have a curiosity for this kind of character, because they just go against the general tide. And they fail, but you know sometimes the best swimmer drowns first.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Prairie Miller (Interviewer). "An Interview with German Filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff." in: World Socialist Website. February 3, 2001.

There is a feeling of a loss for me. We had the end of socialism in Europe, and we had the winner. The winner, that was the market. And you had the loser, that was all these ideals of the left for which so many people had sacrificed for 150 years.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Prairie Miller (Interviewer). "An Interview with German Filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff." in: World Socialist Website. February 3, 2001.

Because we wonder, how can one survive without ideas at all? Is it just consumerism, just go shopping lifelong? Will that fulfill us? I don't think so. I think we always have a longing to give a meaning to life. And that is just the kind of character we are showing in this movie. Rita is a young woman who has that longing and who maybe fails in her attempt, but she is still a larger than life character because of that longing for another world.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Prairie Miller (Interviewer). "An Interview with German Filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff." in: World Socialist Website. February 3, 2001.

We had the choice to either make a movie about terrorism, or about a terrorist who goes into hiding. And the former I thought I had already done in my other films. But the confrontation of their ideals with reality, that I found especially intriguing. So that's why I was not interested in exploring any historical background. I wanted to reflect the two societies of the East and West against each other, and put her utopian ideas to the test with reality.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Prairie Miller (Interviewer). "An Interview with German Filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff." in: World Socialist Website. February 3, 2001.

There's almost a saintly quality to Rita. She's very real, and at the same time she's not quite real. And you believe that Rita is sacrificing everything for her beliefs, she has a very altruistic streak. She's not selfish at all, and she never thinks about herself. She is always giving towards others.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Prairie Miller (Interviewer). "An Interview with German Filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff." in: World Socialist Website. February 3, 2001.

I don't really know whether films can change society. But I feel we need those films with a conscience to enrich our lives, that movies can do. To put things into perspective, and to all of a sudden see that in other places and in other times people had similar struggles as we have right now, is enlightening, is enriching and is encouraging. So we simply need that. I think art in general is a great help for us to survive.
Schlöndorff, Volker and Prairie Miller (Interviewer). "An Interview with German Filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff." in: World Socialist Website. February 3, 2001.

I thought I deserved a break to do something a bit fun. Of course, you could say (I did it because) the kind of movies I used to make are just not much in demand anymore with the audience.
Schlöndorff, Volker. "Playing With Pulp Fiction: Neo-Noir 'Palmetto' A Departure For Director." in: Spliced Wire. February 18, 1998. (English).

Before I became a serious filmmaker, I was just a boy going to the movies, and those are the movies I went to see. I love these thrillers of the late '50s and early '60s. You know -- seedy, sex, money, temptation, the good man (in a dilemma). It probably was the true motivation in wanting to become a filmmaker.
Schlöndorff, Volker. "Playing With Pulp Fiction: Neo-Noir 'Palmetto' A Departure For Director." in: Spliced Wire. February 18, 1998. (English).

It's so hard to take these noir elements really seriously now days because they really seem dated. In the '90s, at least with a hero like Woody Harrelson, you don't think much about good and evil. This kind of temptation is not the same anymore. If there's money, you take it. Period.
Schlöndorff, Volker. "Playing With Pulp Fiction: Neo-Noir 'Palmetto' A Departure For Director." in: Spliced Wire. February 18, 1998. (English).

The Hadley Chase thing is real pulp. I mean, its the kind of book you write in 10 days. (Frye) brought a whole different layer to it, but (preserved) the very pulpy dialogue.My favorite line is 'I'm just a girl with a little ambition.'
Schlöndorff, Volker. "Playing With Pulp Fiction: Neo-Noir 'Palmetto' A Departure For Director." in: Spliced Wire. February 18, 1998. (English).

If they'd go after violence, I'd be with them. I think real obscenity is when I see bodies blown apart, and fingers and heads and limbs going through the air. Sexuality is part of our lives. To be curious about sexuality is a very sane human instinct.
Schlöndorff, Volker. "Playing With Pulp Fiction: Neo-Noir 'Palmetto' A Departure For Director." in: Spliced Wire. February 18, 1998. (English).