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

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

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

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.

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.

In government as well as in trade a new era came to the colonies in 1763.