Barbara Sukowa

“Here I see 3 Women from Altman and I remember I absolutely loved that film but the only thing I really remember was that there was the dress of the one woman I think of Shelley Duvall it was always caught in the door of the car and that is all that I remember about this woman so I take that definitely I haven't seen it in a very long time...”

“Oh and right next to it is Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage fantastic film and I have to say Ingmar Bergman is my greatest professional regret because I met Ingmar Bergman in Munich. He saw me in the theater and he wanted to do a theater play with me and possibly a film and I turned him down. I don't know why to this day. I think I was influenced by the man I was living with at the time. But Liv Ullmann is just one of the greatest actresses ever.”

“Oh here is The Leopard I was doing a film with Cimino, The Sicilian, and so that's why I watched The Leopard... I played an aristocrat and I socialized with the aristocrats in Sicily and so The Leopard was wonderful to watch for that yeah I take that and Visconti is of course visually everything is so beautiful...”

“Oh Husbands I love that film it was for me a whole new kind of film when I saw that for the first time in fact I used to show that to my students... This was so new this improvising and a bit gritty and I really love that... I snuck myself into the theater and was sitting at the very end somewhere trying to hide and I watched the rehearsal... Cassavetes said hi Barbara and I thought what and they asked me if I wanted to have lunch with them.”

“Mike Leigh, Naked, that was also an experience that was very new for me to see that kind of acting that kind of going really to the edge and I met him later because I was with him in the jury in Berlin... I heard and I was talking to him that he did these very long rehearsals which was the opposite of Fassbinder with whom I worked...”

“I see that there's Berlin Alexanderplatz that is when I met Fassbinder for the first time and yeah he had this thing that he did only ever one take... We did the scene without him... Then the scene was done and he asked us so how was it and we said yeah and he said you want to have another take and we were what another take we never have the chance to do another take so we said yeah of course we did another take... It was a way of working that I loved.”

“La strada, Fassbinder told me to watch before we did Berlin Alexanderplatz and I think he wanted me to see Giulietta Masina... What I love is the simplicity of this film the simplicity of the story. You don't need any special effect you don't need any fancy cameras it's just to look into the eyes of this person and to see these people interact with each other. Giulietta Masina also one of the great ones.”