I’ve always been a very serious-minded person, but people don’t know it, really, they’re always puzzled by my films, that there’s usually something going on in the film besides what you’re looking at, which is of course, the contact with the director, an audience has a contact with the story on the screen and also with the director who is telling the story. This is why a director in making a film is such a strange thing—there are some directors who are just card indexes, machines, just put the thing very well on the screen and that’s it. But there are others, who are holding an unspoken communication with the audience all the time, and I’m one of those, and the audience is saying “Well, there’s something going on”— I’ve had this said to me—”There’s things going on in your films, particularly in this sequence, which I didn’t understand but it fascinated me” and I didn’t say anything—what it is, is the direct contact with the audience with the director.

—Michael Powell