There was a blue lamp on the table. Mr Mamoulian placed an orange against it for contrast. He shoved a green chair in front of a red curtain. He made… - Rouben Mamoulian

Colour cinematography tends to brighten and cheapen natural colour. The problem was to counteract that. I realised that colour in films is nearer to painting than to the stage. Now if you look, for instance, at a crimson cloak painted by El Greco, you’ll find that what first appears as a mass of colour is in fact a subtle blending of all sorts of shades, with patches of pink and blue and purple and green. So I treated the colour the way a painter would.

I lifted the sound-proofed camera off its feet and set it in motion on pneumatic tires. Scenes moved out of one room and into others without halt. I tried to introduce what I call counterpoint of [a]ction and dialogue. The camera flew, jerked, floated and rolled, discarding its stubborn tripod-legs for a set odfwired wheels that raced over the studio floors.
"The camera here becomes descriuptive in a new sort of way. Where a break in the ordinary film to allow for a close-up has been the modus-operandi, I now guide my lens along a strraight and continuous line, without breaks in continuity, without needless exolanatory speeches and also sans the printed subtitle.

In this unhappy, fragmented world of ours, overflowing with mutual suspicions, hostilities, violence, and destruction, we need a constructive force. Politics, economics, religions seem to fail. I think our best hope is in the arts. Today, the most powerful and universal and powerful medium of art and communication is in the film. In the last few years I've done a great deal of traveling to many countries, and I've been amazed at the impact of films on both the individuals and the societies of different nations. The influence is enormous. So we must all strive to elevate the quality of motion pictures. We must affirm and insist that the ultimate goal of a film, no matter what subject matter it deals with, is to add to the beauty and goodness of life, to the dignity of human beings and to our faith in a better future.