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I felt privileged to be a facet of such a jewel in the crown of American cinema.

I must say, to my great surprise and pleasure, I deeply loved making movies in the United States because of all the opportunities it gave me to work with people that I admire as artists.

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films.

I had no aspirations to be part of American cinema... I was really a Europe-based person, and those were the films I was inspired by.

I'm getting a little bored by the juxtaposition of American and other cinema. I no longer think this division is as true as it might have been in the 1980s, or the early part of the 90s.

I think I'm a very American director, but I probably should have been making movies somewhere around 1976. I never left the mainstream of American movies; the American mainstream left me.

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema.

What I felt at that time - we're talking about '61 - was that I couldn't remember seeing a film that reflected the age we were living in.

Where I come from, it was a heresy to say you wanted to be in movies, leave alone American movies.

I was very influenced by the films of the '70s.