Latest Frank Capra Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• If the audience gets everything, if they see the photography and notice that it is good, then the story goes out the window, but if you become involved with the lives of the actors and forget that you are seeing mechanical devices on a huge screen - forget the make-believe - this is the job of the director to involve the audience with the actors.

  Frank Capra

  Photography, Jobs, Believe

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Film is universal. All the countries of the world are making films. Hollywood is the only major unsubsidized center for films. To my knowledge all others are at least partially subsidized. I'm glad Hollywood isn't.

  Frank Capra

  Country, Countries Of The World, Hollywood

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's music in my films but you seldom hear it. Very early I got the idea that the important things in films were people - the actors. They are the intermediary between the director and the audience. They make direct contact. People to people communication.

  Frank Capra

  Communication, Ideas, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I have a sixth sense for casting. I just have to see and talk to the actors. I never make tests. I like to work with crowds. I like to get the principals in a crowd. When they do, something else comes off, something special.

  Frank Capra

  Special, Actors, Crowds

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Man's greatest advances are weapon advances. Culture follows from weaponry, we are militant like the animals and birds - defending our homes. No matter how far back you go in history, along with the struggle for existence, along with the survival necessities - kill or be killed, eat or be eaten - there is a hunger for something spiritual. He invents God, prayers, incantations to something above him. Why? This is not brought out - this is not weapon culture.

  Frank Capra

  Spiritual, Prayer, Struggle

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I happen to think that Jesus was the greatest hero of all time. I don't think you could invent that kind of a hero. He had it all - everything that the human spirit could yearn for. There is nothing that man ever said or did, by word or deed that is evil. That is not full of compassion. That is not full of love for your neighbor whether he's down or out, or up - no matter what. He taught that you must love your neighbor whether he's a crook, a beggar, whether he's rich or poor.

  Frank Capra

  Jesus, Love You, Hero

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• War to me is the stupidest way of settling anything. The whole damn thing goes to pieces.

  Frank Capra

  War, Pieces, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I have a feeling that demonstrations don't accomplish anything. That they become fads. I also feel that demonstrations wouldn't go on unless there is a TV camera. That part of it all is performance for the media. I didn't know whether they are completely honest.

  Frank Capra

  Media, Feelings, Cameras

• I think the human spirit is a real powerful spirit. It has no limits and it has no ends. And I hate to see it put in any kind of box - pink or green.

  Frank Capra

  Powerful, Hate, Real

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There are a lot of people who believe that the individual can't make it himself. And that's why people want to join up in various herds - herd formation. So you become part of a herd, a group. Group power of some kind. There's an awful lot of group power people in our country [the USA] - Black power, Chinese power, Indian power, woman power. Everyone is putting in together.

  Frank Capra

  Country, Believe, Usa

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Any kind of dictatorship, I'm uneasy. I just don't like dictators. I don't like crowds. I don't like hordes, and I don't like other people telling me what to do. This is probably a reaction against people telling me what to do when I was a kid. I won't join any group, espouse a cause against some other people.

  Frank Capra

  Kids, People, Groups

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Things own you. That's the trouble with capitalism. Things own you. With communism and fascism - ideas own you. One idea and you can't have any other.

  Frank Capra

  Ideas, Trouble, Communism

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Most of ideologies are not based on the individual - no matter what they say. There are these peoples' democracies, nationalism - they're all dictatorships. And I think any kind of dictatorship is bad for the individual.

  Frank Capra

  Thinking, Democracy, Matter

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Capitalism is supposedly free enterprise. Supposedly about the free individual. But capitalism itself is so massive that the guy on the street gets caught in paying rent, taxes, and he doesn't own himself at all.

  Frank Capra

  Guy, Individual, Paying Rent

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Making money, getting yourself status in this world is not everything at all. But it has become everything in America. That you really have to get going and keep up with the Jones'. Get a house and a car and other things. And pretty soon you're stymied. Things own you.

  Frank Capra

  America, Car, House

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• When you get to political machines that can control a state, then you're really into organized crime - almost. You're fighting a political mafia.

  Frank Capra

  Fighting, Political, Mafia

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Most ideologies of the world are not for the individual. They're against the individual. Communism, fascism. Any kind of an ism - almost - they're against the individual.

  Frank Capra

  Isms, World, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Everybody who works under any system feels confined. It is a natural reaction. You are confined to a certain extent. You are confined if you work in a bank, if you paint. You are confined, in a sense, to your art - the enclosure of your mind. Everybody should break out.

  Frank Capra

  Art, Mind, Break Out

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Man must be able to recover, to win out, triumph over adversity. And I don't mean just the little adversity like paying his room rent or something. But those deep, deep human adversities because something he has faith in has turned to ashes. Where someone he loves turns out to be just another joke. You get to the point of suicide. But you can bounce back - they can't completely destroy you.

  Frank Capra

  Suicide, Mean, Adversity

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Man is a unique individual. He can never be put in a system where he becomes just another notch. Another nail.

  Frank Capra

  Unique, Men, Nails

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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.

  Frank Capra

  People, Laughing, Defense

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• One is never completely satisfied. But I can say that I'm not dissatisfied. I've been very fortunate. I've been given some gifts - to take advantage of the contemporary times when I made movies. Gifts to make audiences laugh.

  Frank Capra

  Laughing, Advantage, Made

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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.

  Frank Capra

  Creativity, College, Skills

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm a living example of getting into films backwards. Merely by accident. Exposure to films and ideas is the best thing that colleges can do.

  Frank Capra

  College, Ideas, Example

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com