I thought the whole thing was so hilarious. I thought a film could show how ridiculous (corrupt executives) are. They are very cunning but also very stupid.

I wanted to make a film about stupid people that was very vulgar and deeply stupid. From that moment on I can hardly be reproached for making a film that is about stupid people.

I must admit that this film echoes the Elf affair in France. I found the real case on TV so entertaining.

I’m not pessimistic about people in general, but only about the way they live.

A woman confronting men is a proper subject, it is inexhaustible.

I’m not wild about hand-held shots.

A woman is subject matter enough.

It’s often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits. I prefer not to write for specific people.

As far as I was concerned, either I was a homosexual or I wasn’t, so making films would change nothing.

Laying tracks gives you freedom without being too obvious.

First I went to the Sorbonne to do my licence en lettres, but I also started to study law.

Some colors are very difficult to render, and you must compensate to get the color you want on the screen.

I brought the film like a flower to the world.

There was one thing which I thought was tremendous fun, namely finding as many angles as possible within the confines of a single room.

I like making black and white films in natural surroundings, but I much prefer shooting a color film inside a studio where the colors are easier to control.

There’s one thing which I hate about color films… people who use up a lot of their despairing producer’s money by working in the laboratory to bring out the dominant hues, or to make color...

I like to have the screen full of color, twenty colors on the screen at once, fifty colors. There are no dominants despite what people have said.

On ne peut pas tout avoir. Et puis d’abord où le mettrait-on?

Every time I saw the Elf affair on television, I switched on the set because I found it incredibly funny. I thought that, if we could put that it in a film, it would give...

I love mirrors. They let one pass through the surface of things.

My father wanted me to be a pharmacist like himself. He had been a doctor, but he no longer believed in medicine; so he became a pharmacist, but he believed in that hardly more.

I remember an article, I can’t recall who by, it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which said that now the Wall was down, there could be no more class war. Only someone...