Christian Petzold

“I saw when I came in Wanda by Barbara Loden here. It's one of my favorites and I must say is something I have discovered together with my friend Haroon Farocki. He used Wanda for one of his seminars. One scene, Wanda is coming into a bar, she's out of money... And this man who is not the bar keeper, he's a robber. From this moment on both are together, the robber and Wanda. People are together not because they are in love because they need each other. Love is something which is coming later.”

“I see the movie Lady Eve here. I have to take this too. Lady Eve I think I've seen together with Nina Hoss for Phoenix. There is something in this which is also in Phoenix: there is a man who doesn't recognize his wife. Both of them, the guilty dumb German and The Innocent dumb American, are brothers when they are in front of the woman.”

“Traffic by Soderbergh. It's a fantastic movie. For me Soderbergh is jazz. It's a band. I have always the feeling that he's not an auteur like an artist of the 19th century, that he needs a band and they make jam sessions and the movie is the jam session. Ocean's 11 is like a band who has a concert in Amsterdam or concert in Rome, and Traffic, it's a concert in the middle of the American hearts.”

“People on Sunday. I was in Vienna in a film museum, we saw all Edgar Ulmer movies and People on Sunday. I was astonished: Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Robert Siodmak, they have to make a movie at the Weekend because they work for magazines or for scripts. This movie invents a new cinema, a cinema of bodies who can dance, bodies from the working class, bodies without makeup, without costumes. It's a fantastic free atmosphere, a fresh air is inside of this movie.”

“A Matter of Life and Death is also, oh my God, this is one of the best movies I ever saw in my life. It's a tale of love poetry, a story about the war like a romantic tale for lovers.”

“These are Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales. This, you can see them all, they are fantastic.”

“Then this Rossellini starring Ingrid Bergman is a collaboration. You must think she made Casablanca, she was a star, and then she went to this communist Catholic communist Rossellini to Italy and they make six movies together. Stromboli, there is one scene when Ingrid Bergman wants to leave the island and she seduces a man who can bring her out. Some years later both make Journey to Italy. When something is dying you can feel for one moment all the enthusiasm of the start.”