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

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.

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

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.

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.

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