MG: Let’s get back to movies on that positive note. In Man Hunt, the love story between Walter Pidgeon’s and Joan Bennett’s characters is very oblique.
FL: Here is a girl who is a whore. She’s in bed, crying, and she doesn’t understand that he doesn’t sleep with her because
she loves him. And maybe she loves him twice as much; maybe she wouldn’t love him if he would have gone to bed with her. But everything which he does to her is something so new. It has never happened before, to her, that anyone kisses her hand. Is it really necessary to show naked breasts for such a thing?
LC: Still, Pidgeon’s character seems very much a white knight.
FL: No, but look. When Goebbels offered me the leadership of German film, that same evening I left Berlin. So, naturally, at a time like this I think ‘What should I say?’ Otherwise, would I rather end up in a concentration camp? And I looked out the window and it was already too late to get my money—that is another story—thinking what can happen to me ‘til I leave Germany. And do you think if the most luscious girl would have come, I would have gone to bed with her? No. I have other things to do.
MG: Did you have final cut in your American films?
FL: In While the City Sleeps there was a scene with Ida Lupino and Dana Andrews sitting in a bar—I had seen something similar in New York. She orders a drink and he’s already drunk and she opens her purse and takes a small frame out, looks at it and smiles. And you know immediately she is naked; she is on the make for him. You see the barkeeper, who looks over and would like to see it, too; and Dana Andrews wants to look because everybody knows they will see Ida Lupino
naked. Dana Andrews grabs her wrist and the little frame falls over the bar. The barkeeper jumps on it and looks at it, and
now you show it for the first time: and it’s a naked baby on a bear rug. And the audience laughs.
The producer wanted to cut that out. “It’s not funny.” I said ‘You have no right to cut it out. But after the preview you can do whatever you want.’ So I had to fight with him because I don’t want to have to fight five days. We left it in. And it comes
to the preview. I am sitting there, holding my tongue, and the film goes and goes and now it comes. And I am waiting and waiting and the audience starts to laugh and applaud. And the producer runs out and meets my cutter outside and the cutter says “You see, Lang was right.” The producer said “Yes, he was right here, but I will show it at a preview until the audience doesn’t laugh.” And then I cut it. Look, against the stupidity of human beings, you are powerless.
MG: Do you prefer your German films or those you made in America?
FL: If you have many children, which one do you like best? Can you give me an answer? You have no children! Well, we’ll talk when you have some, then.
LC: Peter Bogdanovich, in his book, implies that your films improved when you came to the States.
FL: But wait a minute. It is different when you work for two different audiences. The European audiences are another audience from the American audience. Right?
LC: Would you say you are attracted by certain themes?
FL: What I resent in today’s filmmaking is they are “special cases.” They are never, or mostly never—like in Fury, a case of lynching; or like in M, the child murderer. These are eternal problems. If I would—if I could—make a film today with my eyes, you know what I would do? I would do a film about a 15-year old girl who is pregnant and how she has to face life. That is something which happened 20 years ago and will happen 20 years from now.
LC: In Bogdanovich’s book, you mentioned something about a project you had for Jeanne Moreau, The Diary of a Career Girl?
FL: Yeah. There was a time in Hollywood where there were career girls who said everything can be sacrificed for a career. I wrote an outline, but I didn’t have time to follow it up.
LC: An interesting theme in light of women’s liberation.
FL: Yeah. Maybe you are right. I didn’t think about that. I suppose you would have to make long, long research. When I made Clash by Night, I was looking through these women’s magazines and I found that over 77 percent of women had extramarital relationships. So you have to try to find out what’s really going on in life before you make such a film. And about women’s liberation I couldn’t, because I have not much experience with young women.
LC: Clash by Night and Human Desire both open with wonderful documentary sequences.
FL: With regard to Clash by Night, Nicholas Musuraca, who is a wonderful cameraman, we went up to Monterey and we had nothing to do so we started to shoot a bit. After three days we had 10,000 feet. And we sent it back to Jerry Wald and we expected that he would say “You son of a bitches, what are you doing with the film?” But we got a wire: “Congratulations. That’s a wonderful opening!”
I didn’t want to make Human Desire. There was a time when there was a standstill in Hollywood and I wanted to step out of this film—for reasons which would be too long now, and I would have to attack a man who is dead. Harry Cohn said “Fritz, naturally you can get out. You don’t have to do it, but according to your contract you are still under contract to Columbia and you can’t get paid and you will not get paid and you have no right to work anywhere else as long as you don’t work…” So I made Human Desire. I don’t know any other desire than human desire.
MG: What filmmakers do you admire?
FL: I admire all film which is good. But you can learn only from a bad film, not from a good film. I prove it: if you are an audience, you go to a good film. Period. If you see a bad film and you say “What is this? That is wrong. I wouldn’t have
done it that way,” then you have learned something.
MG: This question has nothing to do with movies. But what do you do to relax?
FL: I couldn’t relax. I made only movies in my life. That was all. MM
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