Douglas Sirk (born Hans Detlef Sierck; April 26, 1897 – January 14, 1987) was a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s. Read full biography of Douglas Sirk →
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... →
These happy endings all express the weak and sly promise that the world is not rotten and out of joint but meaningful and ultimately in excellent... →
I considered that the homes that people live in exactly describe their lives.
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... →
And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.
At the same time, of course, Marxism arose - Rosa Luxembourg, Leninism, anarchism - and art became political.
And it really began with Einstein. We attended his lectures. Now the theory of relativity remained - and still remains - only a theory. It has not... →
But I always wanted my characters to be more than cyphers for the failings of their world. And I never had to look too hard to find a part of myself... →
I was making films about American society, and it is true that I never felt at home there, except perhaps when my wife and I lived on a farm in the... →
Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.
The war was the end of an era, in art as well. And we were trying to create a new philosophy.
Throughout my pictures I employ a lighting which is not naturalistic.
Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are... →
Douglas Sirk (born Hans Detlef Sierck; April 26, 1897 – January 14, 1987) was a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.