We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Looking at this pleasant, pale-complexioned young man in spectacles, it is difficult to believe that he made his first films in Hungary in the first years of the War.
" We did not think much about markets in those days," he said. "The director was usually quite out of touch with commercial considerations and simply made his picture as he saw it.
"Yet in a way that serves to illustrate the most important thing I have to say about what we call 'the international film.' We were Hungarians making Hungarian pictures for Hungarian people. But if we had made a notably good one — and if the world had been at peace — I believe it would have had an appeal anywhere. It would have been characteristically Hungarian and a good film — therefore it would have been international. But you must remember the times in which we were working then.
"The first thing to make me give conscious thought to the problem of international films was when a later film of mine, The Prince and the Pauper, made in Vienna, was shown in America. I believe it was the second European film to be seen out of Europe, the first being Lubitsch's Madame du Barry.
"Ever since then I have thought in terms of international films and no other. I might put it epigrammatically and say I believe that international films are what good directors make. And though I have made many bad films in my life I always hope to be a good director.
'But perhaps the phrase 'international film' is a little ambiguous. I do not mean that a film must try to suit the psychology and manners of every country in which it is going to be shown. On the contrary, to be really international a film must first of all be truly and intensely national. It must be true to the matter in it.
'The question of speech is not of much importance nowadays. Apart from the growth of multilingual versions, it has been demonstrated that really good films are recognised as such anywhere."
'But," I put in, "there is the question of humour, which is always raised when internationality of films is discussed. Do you think it is possible to have humour that will be understood and will draw laughs in all countries?"
"I think that within certain limitations that is possible," Korda replied. "The limitations are simply little things that any director feels by intuition or knows by experience should be avoided. For instance, while the English may always be relied upon to laugh at themselves — to respond to irony at the expense of the Englishman and his customs — it is useless to hope for a similar response in France by 'taking off' the French, however gently. They do not understand that type of humour. But, generally speaking, I think there are
13