On directing > There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins | Frank Capra, 1897-1991
George Hoyningen-Huene, Frank Capra, 1934
“Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film.”
“My advice to young filmmakers is this: Don’t follow trends. Start them!”
“There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness.”
“I thought drama was when the actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.”
“A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.”
Frank Capra
“Compassion is a two-way street.”
“Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket… the least understood and the least noticed.”
“All you can do is learn the skills of movies. Neither colleges nor anyone else can teach you creativity. They can teach you abilities to work with – you know how to use the gifts you’ve been born with.”
“Film is one if three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.”
Frank Capra, It Happened One Night, 1934
Frank Capra, You Can’t Take It with You, 1938
“No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark.”
“The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh. You don’t get people to laugh unless they surrender – surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make an audience laugh, they’re with you. And they listen to you if you’ve got something to say. I have a theory that if you can make them laugh, they’re your friends.”
“The best pictures are yet to be made.”
On the set of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939
James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Frank Capra and cameraman Joseph Walker
Frank Capra, Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944 ( Cary Grant and Priscilla Lane )
It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946 premiered at the Globe Theater in New York, 1946
“I always felt the world cannot fall apart as long as free men see the rainbow, feel the rain and hear the laugh of a child.”
“I want to put into your heads that the world is not all evil. Yes, we do have nightmares, but we also have dreams. We do have villainy, but we also have great compassion among ourselves. That’s all I’m here for, really, to try to tell you that there’s good in the world. And that it’s wonderful.”
Frank Capra, 1897-1991
