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In America, they shoot budgets and schedules, and they don't shoot films any more. There's more opportunity in Europe to make films that at least have a purity of intent.

In fact, it is amazing how much European films - Italian, French, German and English - have recovered a certain territory of the audience in their countries over the last few years.

As much as we'd like to believe that our work is great and that we're infallible, we're not. Hollywood movies are made for the audience. These are not small European art films we're making.

I'm really drawn to European films.

I absolutely refuse to accept the fact that any country in the world goes into a kind of film-making crisis. What happens is they lose confidence, they lose focus and the young film-makers of any particular generation can very easily get lost in that mix. It's happened in Italy, happened in France, happened in the U.K. during my lifetime.

In this age of consumerism film criticism all over the world - in America first but also in Europe - has become something that caters for the movie industry instead of being a counterbalance.

When I discovered European filmmakers, it affected me so deeply. It redefined what cinema could be. I mean, 'Blow-Up' ends with a dead body and mimes playing tennis. What?

The American movie, in part because America's a melting pot, the cultural hodgepodge that America makes, generates movies that have appeal across all international boundaries. And that's really not true for most domestic film industries. It's no longer true of France and Italy, less true than it used to be of the U.K.

I'm not naive enough to pretend that on its own cinema can capture the very soul of significant social and cultural problems.