I was born at a bad time for Spain, but a really good one for cinema.
Broadway musicals, where you sing the whole time, I really don't like; I like alternating dialogue and music.
The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion.
I used this line to demonstrate how important colors are in movies: It's not a caprice.
The challenge to me as a director was for the audience to see the film as going on in a straight line, so that they did not sense all of these break-ups. I did not want a film to be a collage of all these images.
I think it's a change that I did not intend at the time but it is clear that, from The Flower of My Secret on, there is a change in my films. A lot of the journalists have very generously attributed this to my growing maturity.
My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles - that's me. Everything that's in front of the camera, I bring you.
Even though I love my mother, I didn't want to make an idealized portrait of her. I'm fascinated more by her defects - they are funnier than her other qualities.
All my movies have an autobiographical dimension, but that is indirectly, through the personages. In fact, I am behind everything that happens and that is said, but I am never talking about myself in first person singular.
There's something about uninterrupted singing that just doesn't work for me, because at some point, I need my characters to talk. Without meaning to offend anyone, a musical like 'Les Miserables' would be the last thing I'd ever be interested in.
Whenever I arrive on a real location, I have to move around and work out what the best angles are going to be. When I was moving around with the lens, I discovered things that the naked eye would not have.
The Flower of My Secret is definitely more based in true emotions. I also wanted to make something more realistic, but not naturalistic or simple.
Yes, women are stronger than us. They face more directly the problems that confront them, and for that reason they are much more spectacular to talk about. I don't know why I am more interested in women, because I don't go to any psychiatrists, and I don't want to know why.
In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government.
Hospitals are places that you have to stay in for a long time, even if you are a visitor. Time doesn't seem to pass in the same way in hospitals as it does in other places. Time seems to almost not exist in the same way as it does in other places.
