Quotes

[on Mephisto (1981)] I only wanted to show the problem and hoped that the viewer will identify with that character and then feel ashamed. And if they do feel ashamed, they will encounter themselves. Then they can get to know themselves better. And maybe that feeling of shame - that cathartic sense of shame - is a vaccination against actually being like that. This is out effort with that film, and I view the film as a medicine.

[on critics who claim that a knowledge of Hungarian history is necessary to understand his films] I'm talking universally about how our subconscious apprehension of our history guides and controls us. It runs us without our knowledge necessarily. You don't need Hungarian history to explain it.

[on being Oscar-nominated for Mephisto (1981)] The Oscar wouldn't give me anything in particular. It doesn't mean anything particular in Europe. I know it's a beautiful thing to be nominated twice, and twice not to win, but it is nice; it is good to be nominated.

People really make too much of a mystery of directing. There is nothing a director needs to know about movie-making that an intelligent high-school graduate can't learn in two weeks.