What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the double standards in how critics assess art from different cultures.
Billy Wilder's quote exposes the hypocrisy in the way critics label and judge artworks based on cultural biases. What is deemed inappropriate or 'dirty' in one context may be celebrated or viewed as passionate and expressive in another, particularly when it comes to foreign films versus domestic ones. This reflects larger societal attitudes toward sexuality, art, and the subjective nature of criticism.
In practice
In a film studies class while discussing cultural differences in film reception.
Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.
I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
I'd worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood.
He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'
And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away.
Every experience shapes your writing, being stuck in a car on a lonely bridge, or dancing at a prom, being the it girl on the beach, all of those things influence your life, they influence how you write, and the topics you choose to write about.
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance.
I want my photographs not only to be real but to portray the essence of my subjects also. In order to do that, you have to be patient.
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