97-Idi i smotri (aka "Come and See") - Director:Elem Klimov -Cast:Aleksei Kravchenko,Olga Mironova,Liubomiras Lauciavicius,and Vladas Bagdonas.

"As a young boy, I had been in hell.--The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. The river was also burning. It was night, bombs were exploding, and mothers were covering their children with whatever bedding they had, and then they would lie on top of them. Had I included everything I knew and shown the whole truth, even I could not have watched it."

-Elem Klimov-

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"Severel years ago I got a call from my father telling me to drop whatever I was doing and make my way over to the UCLA campus.One of the 'halls' was putting on a showing of a Russian movie,by a director named Klimov,and it was not to be missed.

A veteran of some 36 missions over Berlin during the second World War ,my dad never been one to embrace filmdom's history of War.Feeling either their inaccuracies or appalled by the common romatic view of battle.This film 'Come and See' was a great portrait of and against War.

I'm glad I made it over there that day because what I saw will stay with me forever.It is not only a masterpiece of filmmaking ,but of humanity itself."

-Sean Penn-

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"I hadn't made any films by that time, I'd worked in the theatre, and when you're working in film or in television you learn very, very quickly that 75% of what you experience is sound. It's amazing that everyone bows down to the camera department on set and sound people are usually treated as pariahs. I just remember thinking about it at the time and every time I've worked on a film since then I've remembered this film, not in detail, but just to think about the sound.
They use the limitations of sound. On the Hollywood side of movies sound technology has developed enormously, surround sound, and we're all trying to import it into our homes, and Hollywood is feeding that. But what this kind of film does is the opposite of that really, it uses the absolute centre, what it does is take out everything apart from someone's footsteps through water. You can hear the dialogue, but all the stuff around it appears to be filtered out. We appear to have very little access to sound in a way. I think it probably comes out of editing really, that the Russians pioneered, with modern aesthetics, and you see it in visual terms at the collage towards the end. I'm sure it came out of that, the ability to layer and chop things in, really before it became acceptable to edit (sound) like that."

-Danny Boyle-

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"I lost interest in making films ... Everything that was possible I felt I had already done"

-Elem Klimov(2001)----R.I.P(2003)

96-The Magician - Director:Ingmar Bergman - Cast: Max von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand, Naima Wifstrand, Bengt Ekerot,Bibi Anderson,and Erland Josephson.

"The actual focal point of the story is, of course, the androgynous Aman/Manda. It is around her and her enigmatic personality that everything rotates. Manda represents the belief in the holiness of human beings. Vogler, on the other hand, has given up. He is involved in the cheapest kind of theatre, and she knows it. Manda is very open in her talk with Vergérus. The miracle happened once, and she herself carries it. She loves Vogler in spite of being fully aware that he has lost his faith. If Vogler is a magician, who, even though he is tired to death, keeps repeating his by now meaningless hocus-pocus, then Tubal is the exploiter, the salesman of art. Tubal is Bergman, the director, trying to convince Dymling, the head of the studio, of the usefulness and quality of his latest film. In front of extremely skeptical studio executives, I managed to sell The Magician as a hell of an erotic comedy."
-Ingmar Bergman-

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"The film is a metaphor for the artist and all the parts that the audience projects into the artist. It is—or rather was—Bergman's own situation, for the audience projected all their fantasies into him, and he became an extremely interesting and fascinating individual. This goes for rock musicians, movie stars and others like them."

-Max von Sydow-

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"The Magician was created in an atmosphere of high spirits despite the black components in the tale we were spinning. Most certainly this had to do with the feeling of camaraderie in our troupe of jesters, for such we were during our Malmö period. Later, when I repeated themes from The Magician in 'The Rite', they took on a totally different and much more rancid note."
-Ingmar Bergman-

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"Jonas Sima: It's been said that in The Magician you were caricaturing Harry Schein ( Ingrid Thulin's husband-also head of the Swedish Film Institute).
Ingmar Bergman:I was just joking.

Torsten Manns:It's said that Max von Sydow plays you, Björnstrand plays Harry Schein, and Ingrid Thulin plays Ingrid Thulin.
Ingmar Bergman:I say like Flaubert: 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi!.

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"I always had a feeling that a person who looks like that must be extremely gifted. And I was right."

-Ingmar Bergman-on Ingrid Thulin

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"It's fun to work with him. We get very involved emotionally for three months; then it's over and we say goodbye."

-Ingrid Thulin-

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"I was an introverted child. My family lived in a small town in the north of Sweden, and I was very lonely. I had an artistic bent, toward painting and music, and then I drifted into acting when I was still an adolescent. I played everything—music hall singers, comedy ingenues, a few of the classics on the stage. I did one thriller for an American television producer with Robert Mitchum—I think it was finally released in theatres. I can't remember most of them today. My real career began when I went to work for Ingmar."

-Ingrid Thulin-

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"We don't have a company of actors. No. It has just happened that he (Bergman) has used the same actors quite often....he uses us over and over again, and it must be very tiring for the audience sometimes. For us, as actors, it is quite amusing because you can follow him and ourselves developing in time. It's very special for us, working with him."

-Ingrid Thulin-

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"Truly one of the great movie actresses of our time. As a jealous colleague expressed it once: 'she is married to the camera'."

-Ingmar Bergman-on Ingrid Thulin

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"She was a wonderful actress and a close friend. I mourn her tremendously. She was extremely skilful, but so incredibly beautiful that people were tricked by her looks. They didn't always see her other sides. For instance, she had an incredible sense of humour."

- Harriet Andersson- Ingrid Thulin R.I.P

Robert Mitchum & Ingrid Thulin

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The great Ingrid Thulin smiling for the great Fellini

95-The Naked Kiss - Director: Samuel Fuller - Cast: Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey,and Patsy Kelly.

"A film is like a battleground. There's love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word, emotions."

-Samuel Fuller-
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" I don't think 'Shock Corridor' or 'The Naked Kiss' can really be considered film noir. True they're in black-and-white but that's about it."

-Samuel Fuller-

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"I wanted it to be a shocking film. You know the opening, the victim's point of view as the call girl beats on him, the visual shock when her wig comes off; but after that, the audience knows who she is. There's no surprise there. What I wanted was the whole concept of a a caste system--not the formal one like they have in India or Japan--but a real sense among the social outcasts that there is something so vile, so low, that even they must scorn it. In prisons, you know, the convicts all revile the child molesters. They call them chicken hawks, and a lot of them get killed by murderers and thieves who are outraged at what they did. And that's the hypocrisy in our society. Constance Towers is a hooker but she has a moral belief. She tries to change her life, thinks it's going to happen, finds out this guy is scum, and kills him. And when they find out about her past everybody assumes she's guilty as hell. I guess that is something of a film noir situation, but for me the irony was more straight-forward. She is a hooker for business reasons. She loves children for personal reasons. She can love kids and be a good person and still go back to being a hooker without a second thought because that's just business. Again I hate the cliché, whether it's the whore with a heart of gold or that stupid, self-sacrificing stuff, like Stella Dallas."

-Samuel Fuller-

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"Being a hooker does not mean being evil. The same with a pick-pocket, or even a thief. You do what you do out of necessity. The people who look down on you are just prejudiced, like the townspeople who deride Constance Towers when they think she's a killer and find out about her past and then cannot face her when they discover she actually did something heroic. That's what I wanted to show and that's what I thought was shocking. The irony was a woman who has struggled, finds what she thinks is happiness, the whole nine yards, then finds out it's all a lie. After it's all smashed to bits, she can still pick up the pieces because she still has her own integrity. But nobody got it. It went over like a lead balloon, probably because it was too shocking and distasteful. "

-Samuel Fuller-

94-The Shop Around the Corner - Director:Ernst Lubitsch - Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Sara Haden,and Felix Bressart.

" People who know and love films revere the great director Ernst Lubitsch"
-Leonard Maltin-
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"When I was an adult I fell in love with Ernst Lubitsch, and I loved all of his films unreservedly. They’re fantastic and I could watch them all again and again. I love it when comedy and drama are presented together, and all the values of each, and no one does it better than Lubitsch, though I think Mike Nichols is pretty awesome as well. I personally love Ninotchka. I love Melvyn Douglas and Greta Garbo together, and I love those actors who were in all of Lubitsch’s films, those guys who played the Russians. They’re so ridiculous."
-Sigourney Weaver-
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"The two films that you should see in terms of talking comedy--and I'm not talking about the talking comedies like the Marx brothers, because those are not really legitimate comedies, those are records of the Marx brothers as performers--but in terms of comedies where the movie itself functions, you have to see 'Born Yesterday' and 'Trouble in Paradise'. And then after that, if you haven't seen it, you should see 'The Shop Around the Corner'."
-Woody Allen-
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"You could name the great stars of the silent screen who were finished; the great directors gone; the great title writers who were washed up. But remember this, as long as you live: the producers didn't lose a man. They all made the switch. That's where the great talent is."
-Ernst Lubitsch-

93-The Big Lebowski - Director:Joel Coen - Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston,and Jesus (John Turturro).

" We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story - how it moves episodically, and deals with the characters trying to unravel a mystery. As well as having a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant."

-Joel Coen-

"And there was something attractive about having the main character not be a private eye, but just some pothead intuitively figuring out the ins and outs of an elaborate intrigue. And then there's Walter, whose instincts are always wrong. "

-Ethan Coen-

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"I didn't smoke while I was on the set. It would have been a great excuse to get high. But that's a lesson I've learned. Working in an inebriated state is fine for a couple of takes but you've got to sustain that all day and that really doesn't do you a whole lot of good. So for The Dude I did some sense memory work. I was a bit of a pothead in my youth so I had a lot of experience to draw on..."

-Jeff Bridges-

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"The Dude's a force of nature, man! Usually when I catch one of mine on TV, it's like watching a home movie - oh, I remember that moment, you know - but every time it's The Big Lebowski, I always end up watching the whole damn thing."

-Jeff Bridges-

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"Well, there's a shot in my photography book that's a personal favourite. We were shooting this Busby Berkeley thing and I thought it would be a good day to invite the wife and kids on the set. All of a sudden I realised that there was this scene I had to shoot where I fly under all these women's legs, looking up at their vaginas. So I'm lying on this skateboard and to break the ice I talk to the first girl and say to her, "Do you mind if I take a picture? I've got a real photo opportunity here." And she's like, "By all means, Dude." So I'm lying on my board, looking up at her snatch and there's these huge tufts of pubic hair sticking out of her leotard. I look up the next skirt and there's even more pubic hair. And as I go further down the line, the girls are getting more and more bushy. And I'm like, God, this is a dream! Turns out they'd been pulling one on The Dude and stuffed a load of hair inside their leotards."

-Jeff Bridges-

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The dvdbeaver review of "The Big Lebowski" still is Mr.Gary Tooze finest hour

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/Reviews/bigl.htm#b

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AND dvdbeaver Members list-Top 100 Films
(#97) http://www.dvdbeaver.com/our-picks.htm

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Yes,just like in here...In the middle of all the Bergmans,Dreyers,and Tarkovskys.....

Well,sometimes there's a man....

92-Woman In The Dunes - Director:Hiroshi Teshigahara - Cast:Eiji Okada and Kyôko Kishida.

"I decided to shoot this film when I read the original story,but as soon as I started,I realized that I had underestimated the challenges of handling sand.In order to show a sandpit that one cannot escape from,I needed a slope of sand that one could climb out of .However,since sand can only be piled up to around 30 degrees,it was very difficult to simulate such a slope. Kyoko Kishida willingly agreed to appear in this film when I asked her.She also had read the original and seemed she wanted to do this role.Therefore,acting direction for Eiji Okada and Kishida went very smoothly.Kishida did the nude scene for us daringly.Both Okada and Kishida got into their roles so deeply that the look of their faces changed during the four month shooting.

This film is the story of a woman who lives with the sand surrounding her,finding her purpose of life there,and a man who discovers water in the sand,seeing hope in it,desperately tries to escape but finally decides to remain there.Human nature is the theme.
-Hiroshi Teshigahara-

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"More than almost any other film I can think of, "Woman in the Dunes'' uses visuals to create a tangible texture--of sand, of skin, of water seeping into sand and changing its nature. It is not so much that the woman is seductive as that you sense, as you look at her, exactly how it would feel to touch her skin. The film's sexuality is part of its overall reality: In this pit, life is reduced to work, sleep, food and sex, and when the woman wishes for a radio, "so we could keep up with the news,'' she only underlines how meaningless that would be."

-Roger Ebert-

91-Psycho - Director:Alfred Hitchcock - Cast:Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh,Vera Miles,John Gavin,and Martin Balsam.

"The mysterious atmosphere is, to some extent, quite accidental. For instance, the actual locale of the events is in northern California, where that type of house is very common. They're either called "California Gothic," or, when they're particularly awful, they're called "California gingerbread." I did not set out to reconstruct an old-fashioned Universal horror-picture atmosphere. I simply wanted to be accurate, and there is no question but that both the house and the motel are authentic reproductions of the real thing. I chose that house and motel because I realized that if I had taken an ordinary low bungalow the effect wouldn't have been the same. I felt that type of architecture would help the atmosphere of the yarn. --

You know that the public always likes to be one jump ahead of the story; they like to feel they know what's coming next. So you deliberately play upon this fact to control their thoughts. The more we go into the details of the girl's journey, the more the audience becomes absorbed in her flight. That's why so much is made of the motorcycle cop and the change of cars. When Anthony Perkins tells the girl of his life in the motel, and they exchange views, you still play upon the girl's problem. It seems as if she's decided to go back to Phoenix and give the money back, and it's possible that the public anticipates by thinking, "Ah, this young man is influencing her to change her mind." You turn the viewer in one direction and then in another; you keep him as far as possible from what's actually going to happen. --

In the average production, Janet Leigh would have been given the other role. She would have played the sister who's investigating. It's rather unusual to kill the star in the first third of the film. I purposely killed the star so as to make the killing even more unexpected. As a matter of fact, that's why I insisted that the audiences be kept out of the theaters once the picture had started, because the late-comers would have been waiting to see Janet Leigh after she has disappeared from the screen action. --

Psycho has a very interesting construction and that game with the audience was fascinating. I was directing the viewers. You might say I was playing them, like an organ. --

That's why I take pride in the fact that Psycho, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to film-makers, to you and me(Truffaut). I can't get a real appreciation of the picture in the terms we're using now. People will say, "It was a terrible film to make. The subject was horrible, the people were small, there were no characters in it." I know all of this, but I also know that the construction of the story and the way in which it was told caused audiences all over the world to react and become emotional."

-Alfred Hitchcock-Hitchcock (Revised Edition)

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" He was so brilliant he almost ruined his career,because no one would allow him to be anyone but Norman Bates, even though before he had been comedic, romantic, dramatic. '

-Janet Leigh-on Anthony Perkins

90-Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (aka 'Black God, White Devil') Director: Glauber Rocha - Cast:Geraldo Del Rey,Yona Magalhães,Maurício do Valle,Othon Bastos,Lídio Silva,and Sônia dos Humildes.



"Latin hunger is not only an alarming system: it is the nerve of its own society.There the tragic originality of the Cinema Novo is displayed before the world movies:-our originality is our hunger and our greatest poverty is that this hunger, being felt, it is not understood "
-Glauber Rocha-
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"We [the Cinema Novo] understand this hunger that the majority of Europeans and Brazilians don't understand… They don't know where this hunger comes from. We know – we who make these sad and ugly films, these desperate films where reason doesn't always possess the loudest voice, that hunger will not be cured by the planning of the cabinet [i.e. government] and that the strips of technicolor will not hide but amplify its tumors. That said, only a culture of hunger, looking at its own structure, can rise above itself, qualitatively speaking: it's the noblest manifestation of cultural hunger and violence. "
-Glauber Rocha-
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"Rocha's concern with thematic dialectics is most apparent in his explorations of Brazilian popular culture, which he perceived as representing both a permanent rebellion against oppression and the evasion of social problems...Rocha's efforts to form a genuinely Brazilian cinema, founded on authentic themes and expressed through an idiom peculiar to Latin America, led him to make beautiful and moving films which continue to speak for his ideals." John Mraz (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)
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"Perhaps the premier Brazilian filmmaker, Rocha is an artist with a social conscience who makes films reflecting the barbarity, beauty, earthiness, and inequality in the culture of his country. Sometimes he illustrates truths through myths."
-William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) -
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"('Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol' is) the most beautiful thing I have seen in more than a decade, filled with a savage poetry.’
-Luis Bunuel-

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"I have always been in love with Picasso and Luis Bunuel.Both had a great impact in my life as a man and as an artist,and I had the pleasure to know(-live with) him for a few months. I've always said to everyone that the only person in the world that impressed me only buy his look,gestures,I mean ...-moral- was Luis Bunuel.No man impressed me by his look and contact,only Luis Bunuel.I had the impression that I was seeing a God. That does not mean I was being influenced by Bunuel,like some critics like to say,because I made my films knowing Bunuel('s work) very little.Only after I made my films I learned more about Bunuel.
-Glauber Rocha-
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"Everybody wants to kill Glauber Rocha.They did not forgive me for making 'Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol' at the age of 23.This is crazy.I mean,we can exist.You make something and it doesn't grow...I always have collective thoughts about Brazilian Cinema and they thought about killing me.I found out that they were double-crossing me,like on a Shakespeare play.It was crazy.So,I think,with openings,and with the emergency of youth,a new generation of filmmakers will rise.But not on the same terms because television changed the Cinema's language.And,by the way,I really like that Francis Ford Coppola talked about me in Cannes,in his interview to the press, he said I was right."
-Glauber Rocha-
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"He used to call me 'Antonio das Mortes'(laughs)"

-Francis Ford Coppola-
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"The camera needs to be treated like a musical instrument.The editing like drums.People nedd to understand cinema though the camera.How it writes,sing,dance...The editing is the rhythm and has no rules."
-Glauber Rocha-

89-The Philadelphia Story - Director:George Cukor - Cast:Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, and Ruth Hussey.

" Howard Hughes bought the movie rights for me. Howard was no fool,he knew that every actress would want it,and was afraid that nobody would want me in it.Now,it was mine.I sold it to L.B.Mayer at Metro on condition that I play the lead.I asker for Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy to play opposite me.I got Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant--not bad."

-Katharine Hepburn-

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"I understood Tracy Lords.I knew what made her tick.I gave her life,she gave me back my career"

-Katharine Hepburn-

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"Q(Joan Bakewell): You were nominated, I believe, for an Academy Award for that film. In fact, you won your Academy Award for Philadelphia Story. Was it fun to make?
Jimmy Stewart: Yes. Miss Hepburn and Cary [Grant]... The whole thing. I, frankly, have always felt that they gave me the Academy Award for Mr Smith instead of this picture as a sort of consolation thing, 'Ah, poor Jim, the competition was too tough last year, but we'll give it to him anyway'. This is just a personal opinion, I don't know.
Q: Your acting looks effortless. Can you explain the effort that goes into this?
Jimmy Stewart: Well, I think one of the main things that you have to think about when acting in the movies is to try not to make the acting show. It's such an intimate thing that you have to make a thing believable without using the device of acting. That doesn't make any sense at all.

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"Everyone grows older, except Cary Grant."

-Grace Kelly- (who was the star of "High Society"-the musical remake of The Philadelphia Story)

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" My first great chance came in 1936, when I was borrowed by RKO for 'Sylvia Scarlett'(Cukor) playing opposite Katharine Hepburn. This picture did nothing to endear its female lead to the public, but it helped me to success. For once, the audiences and the critics did not see me as a nice young man, with regular features and a heart of gold. After this picture I made one after another, probably too many. "

-Cary Grant-

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"The fan magazines say I am a happy man. Columnists published that I received 125,000 dollars for The Philadelphia Story. They print a lot of things about me - even that Hollywood had given me a guarantee of 500,000 dollars in addition to a ten per cent share of the world-wide gross of the picture Guns of the Navarone. The columnists predicted I would marry Sophia Loren, after they had guessed on Ingrid Bergman first. Every reporter claims I'm happy. To all of this I say: Learn how to be unhappy. If you have never been unhappy, you cannot possibly know what happiness is. Happiness is a matter of degree. The greatest unhappiness in the world belongs to the rich boy who receives a yacht for Christmas when he expected a private airplane. The greatest happiness belongs to the poor man who learns that he does not have cancer after being told that cancer was suspected. "

-Cary Grant-

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"Truthfully, the psychology of the story is a specious as a spiel, and, for all the talk about the little lady being "a sort of high priestess to a virgin goddess," etc., she is and remains at the end of what most folks would call a plain snob. But the way Miss Hepburn plays her, with the wry things she is given to say, she is an altogether charming character to meet cinematically. Some one was rudely charging a few years ago that Miss Hepburn was "box-office poison." If she is, a lot of people don't read labels - including us.
But she isn't the only one who gives a brilliant performance in this film. James Stewart, as the acid word-slinger, matches her poke for gibe all the way and incidentally contributes one of the most cozy drunk scenes with Miss Hepburn we've ever seen. Cary Grant, too, is warmly congenial as the cast-off but undefeated mate, and Ruth Hussey, Virginia Weidler, Roland Young and Mary Nash add much to the merriment.
Provided you have a little patience for the lavishly rich, which these folk are, you should have great fun at "The Philadelphia Story." For Metro and Director George Cukor have graciously made it apparent, in the words of a character, that one of "the prettiest sights in this pretty world is the privileged classes enjoying their privileges." And so, in this instance, will you, too.

-The New York Times-Dec.1940 (Bosley Crowther)

James Stewart & Ginger Rogers

88-Breaking the Waves - Director:Lars von Trier - Cast:Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, Katrin Cartlidge, Jean-Marc Barr, and Adrian Rawlins.

"I prefer to work with unassailable ideas. And I wanted to do a film about goodness. When I was little I had a children's book called Golden Heart (a Danish fairytale) which I have a very strong and fond memory of. It was a picturebook about a little girl who went out into the woods with pieces of bread and other things in her pocket. But at the end of the book, after she's passed through the woods, she stands naked and without anything. And the last sentence in the book was: "'I'll be fine anyway,' said Golden Heart." it expressed the role of the martyr in its most extreme form. I reread the book several times, even though my father regarded it as the worst trash you could imagine. The story for Breaking the Waves probably has its origin there. Golden Heart is the film's Bess. I also wanted t do a film with a religious motif, a film about miracles. At the same time I wanted to do a completely naturalistic film. "

-Lars von Trier-

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"I'm a Catholic, but I don't worship Catholicism for Catholicism's own sake. I have felt the need to experience a sense of belonging with a religious community, because my parents were convinced atheists. I flirted with religion quite a bit as a youngster. You perhaps search for a more extreme religion as a youngster. You either go to Tibet or seek out the most rigorous of all faiths. With total abstinence and such like. I think I have a more Dreyer-like view of the whole thing. Because Dreyer's religious view is in essence humanistic. He also accuses religion in all his films. Religion is accursed, but not God. It's like that as well in Breaking the Waves. "

-Lars von Trier-

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"probably films like La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc and Gertrud have had their relevance in connection to Breaking the Waves. His films are naturally more academic, more refined. What is new for me is that a woman is at the centre of the story. All of Dreyer's films have a woman as the central character. And the suffering woman besides. The original title was Amor Omnie (ie, 'Love is Omnipresent'), the motto Gertrud wanted on her gravestone in Dreyer's film. But when my producer heard that title, he almost hit the roof. he found it difficult to imagine that anyone would want to see a film called Amor Omnie. "

-Lars von Trier-

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"When I was in film school, it was said that all good films were characterised by some form of humour. All films except Dreyer's! Many of his films are thoroughly vacuum-cleaned of humour. You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance. Here I didn't want to distance myself from the strong emotions that the story and its characters contain. I think that this strong emotional engagement was very important for me. Because I grew up in a home, a culturally radical home, where strong emotions were forbidden. The members of my family that I've shown the film to have also been severely critical toward it. My brother thought the film was indifferent and tedious and my uncle (Borge Host, Danish director and producer of short films and documentaries) saw the whole thing as an abject failure from beginning to end. But with my earlier films, he supported me in all possible ways. So perhaps Breaking the Waves is my adolescent revolt."

-Lars von Trier-

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"It is a curious mixture of religion and eroticism and possession. The well-known actors we turned to didn't dare put their careers on the line - for example Helena Bonham Carter pulled out of the production at the very last minute. That's why it felt important to find some actors who really had the enthusiasm to participate. And I think it feels as if the heart is in it among those we finally chose. We screen-tested quite a number of actresses for the role of Bess. Late I watched the video together with Bente (von Trier's partner), and she saw it as quite obvious that Emily Watson should get the role. I was also engaged by Emily's performance, but it was Bente's enthusiasm above all which convinced me. I also remember that Emily was the only one who came to the casting barefoot and with no make-up at all! There was something Jesus-like about her which attracted me. She had had no earlier film experience. Which means that she was, to a great extent, forced to trust me as a director. The collaboration was also extremely easy. The funny thing is that where Emily is concerned I consistently used the last take of every scene. With Katrin Cartlidge, on the other hand, I consistently chose the first. What is decisive is their different performance techniques. We worked in a very improvised fashion, ignoring continuity and giving the actors a lot of freedom in their performance. With Katrin, who is a more experienced actress, the intensity in her performance diminished with every new take. In Emily's case I furnished more exact instructions, which resulted in her fine-tuning her performance progressively for each new take. "

-Lars von Trier-

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"The power of an actress is fleeting, so I want to put my weight behind directors who interest me. I saw Breaking the Waves and responded in such a strong way that in an interview I told a journalist, 'I'd like to work with Lars von Trier.' Would I have played the part in Breaking the Waves? Yes, I would. And Dancing in the Dark I think is a magnificent film."

-Nicole Kidman-(later star of von Trier's Dogville)

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" 'It was just a very personal thing for me, I never made a film before. I didn't know it was an important film. But I think I was aware that it represented a very intense time of personal change for him (von Trier). Because if you look at the change between Europa and Breaking The Waves, he's thrown the rule book out of the window, and his relationship with actors completely changed, from bodies that you put somewhere to really being in touch with his emotional state. And he was discovering that in Breaking The Waves, so it was special."

-Emily Watson-

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"Even in the script, Bess was so alive and so extraordinarily different from the people surrounding her,that if Emily had played her less graphically than she did, it wouldn't have worked. It was fantastic that she just went for it."

-Katrin Cartlidge-