George Stevens Jr.: Self - Narrator
Quotes
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[first lines]
Self - Narrator : Centuries ago an artist scrawled on a wall, "Let something of me survive." When my father died, he left these things to me. I looked through them, hoping to learn more about the man I thought I knew best in all the world. Here I found his wartime diary. He had written, "Life is a journey and it's always most interesting when you're not sure where you're going."
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Self - Narrator : He said, "I loved the adventure of doing things I hadn't done before." And one of the best remembered of his films of the '30s was a musical, "Swingtime" with Fred and Ginger's dance of parting.
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Self - Narrator : He was 10 years when his mother gave him a box Brownie camera. That's when he started to photograph what he saw around him. His mother was always a willing subject.
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Self - Narrator : He was director of photography and gag writer on 35 films for Laurel and his new partner, Oliver "Babe" Hardy. He said, "Until I met Laurel and Hardy, I didn't know comedy could be graceful and human."
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Self - Narrator : Shooting "Gunga Din" he thrived on what he called, "the excitement of necessity - when you have only yourself to rely on." And he realized his first responsibility was not to the studio, it was to the audience.
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Self - Narrator : One night, alone in a Hollywood screening room, he watched the Nazi propaganda film, "Triumph of the Will". "That film," he said, "influenced my life more than any I would ever see."
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Self - Narrator : Returning to America after four years, he said, "Films were much less important to me and, in a way, perhaps, more important." He would not make comedies anymore.
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[last lines]
Self - Narrator : When my father died in 1975, a friend said, "He was a diverse man composed of many parts. The only time they converge is on a strip of film. That is when you can say, 'That's him.'"
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Self - Narrator : At the Dachau Concentration Camp, what they saw and recorded would not be forgotten.
