German Cinema Quotes

I did a lot of films in Europe, in Spain. I went to Australia and did 'Mad Dog Morgan'; I did 'Apocalypse Now' in the Philippines; I did Wim Wenders' film 'The American Friend' in Germany.

Sure, I acted in films in the Third Reich, entertainment films, which distracted countless people inside and outside Germany from daily life during war.

One of my favorite vampire movies is 'Nosferatu,' which has a palpable sense of dread that's a pre-war dread.

There is quite an important director in Germany who I think in the early fifties over here, and then went back, and he said something that's absolutely true. And it's more important to repeat that today than it ever was. Not for you, but for us over there it is important. He said, 'In America they make movies like art, and sell it like commodities. We make make movies like commodities and sell them like art.'

When 'Run Lola Run' came out, the thing about it was it was a very fast-paced film.

Germany's fascinating. It's a really rich landscape to film and dramatise.

In 1913, the noted German actor and director Paul Wegener was making a film in Prague when he heard the legend of Rabbi Loew, who created a golem to protect the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto from persecution.

I watched the German version of 'Baron Munchasen' and Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' at a young age. 'Star Wars' was also a huge thing when I was a kid.

Sooner or later, directors in Germany will start casting without regard to where a person is from. It shouldn't matter anymore.

I don't think there is such a thing as a German movie star. There are respected actors, but we are not publicized like TV people.

For those of you who thought F. W. Murnau's 'Nosferatu' was his greatest film, I have news for you: his 'Faust' blows it out of the water.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

All I can say is that I did admire 'The Lives of Others', which I thought was really about something and beautifully done.

I don't see a film industry in Germany. They have a great TV culture, but how many German films are really exciting?

But the truth of the matter is, that was fairly, fairly early on in Goebbels' 800 movies that he made in Germany. The majority of them, especially once the war got going, you hardly saw Nazi officers in it at all. They were mostly musicals and comedies and melodramas and stories of great German men from the past.

There's a documentary film-maker called Werner Herzog, who's a German film-maker. I really dig his stuff, I'd love to chat with him.

Germany led the world in photography and film: 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari' and 'Metropolis' are works that, to this day, film buffs revere.

I was lucky to start working when German cinema was having an interesting moment. Now the quality is going downhill again because they're insisting on doing comedies. We should know by now that we make good cars but we're not the funniest people.

I like the movie 'Das Boot,' the German film made in the '80s. I found out it was a series that was made into a film for the U.S.

I don't think German films have to be heavy or intellectual the way they sometimes used to be.

Murnau is neck to neck with Bergman as my favorite director. He's responsible for some of the best images in cinema of all time, from 'Nosferatu' to 'Faust' to 'Sunset.'

We haven't done action movies in Germany. We had some attempts in the '90s, but they failed.

In the late 1980s the amount of German films was down to four or five percent of the market, and the remaining 95 percent were American. It is now 20 to 30 percent German productions.