John Schlesinger

Your film is not least a film about Berlin. What is for you the characteristic of this place?

A place, really, that was recovering after the war, so that the idea that it was trying to function normally, but that still the place bore the scars of the war and that things were not properly repaired, or, you know, which is why we chose to shoot a lot of it in what was, had been East Berlin, which seemed to be very different to the West Berlin at the time. I mean, now, so that it seemed to be years behind itself in that part of Berlin where we shot it. And then the sets were designed similarly to work for the period. I think it works on that level. I mean, I was very worried about how were we going to accurately show East Berlin, I mean, show Berlin, really, Berlin before the wall went up.

What does it mean for you, Berlin in the 50s?

I remember it in the 50s.

It was impossible to show entirely what I remember. I mean, my memories of not so much of Berlin, but of Munich, which is where I visited in the 50s, was of a city that was sort of up all night working to mend itself. And although I shot something with that in mind, it didn't quite work in the context of the film. The film, finally, Berlin is the background, not the foreground.

And what was important for me in the atmosphere of the film was to create a setting for a romance, a love story, albeit a rather paranoid romance, set against an atmosphere of international mistrust, because that's what the film is about, finally. And I hope we've succeeded in doing that.

What was your first intention? A story about spying or a love story?

Both, but I think if I had to choose, the emphasis is really on the love story. I think that, I've done several spy stories and they interest me because of the need to act, to cover up, for duplicity. That's interesting. This is my fourth film which deals with espionage in some way.

And it is, after all, a story about a love affair conducted under extreme duplicity because the audience, nor the potential husband, knows of the existence of the real husband. She's lying about him, and she's desperate to get out from under the relationship with this man. But he's kind of blackmailing her. You find out what he's up to, you get some money out of him, and I'll tear up the divorce papers. I'll sign the divorce papers, sorry, slip of the tongue.

I'll sign the divorce papers. Of course, in the event, he doesn't, and that's why the whole disaster comes to a head.

What is authentic in this story?

What is really authentic was the fact that the British and the Americans dug that tunnel in order to do a colossal and expensive wiretap of the Russians. That's true. And the only other thing that's authentic, of course, is the wall coming down.

And Operation Gold?

Gold is absolutely authentic. Well, I mean, I'm sure the people would say that we didn't do everything correctly, but in principle, that story is the true part of the espionage.

Why did you begin and finish your story in '89? It's important for the plot of your film.

Oh, yes. I think it's important. I think it's important that they came together at the end in a kind of bittersweet way at a moment of... only a moment, I'm afraid, of great cause for celebration, which had its overtones of unrest to come.

You worked in East Berlin. What did you see and perhaps what did you learn there about the political situation today?

Well, the extreme difference economically, the hostility of what had been East Berlin towards West, you know, they didn't have an easy time of it. They were deprived of many things, and I think that the jubilation of one Berlin was overshadowed by the fact that there was envy and indeed mistrust of the West by the East.

And that became more and more evident the longer we were there. I wasn't actually there when there was the kind of demonstrations, the neo-Nazi demonstrations, that kind of thing. Very disturbing. Because as an outsider, although I wasn't born in Germany, my name is Schlesinger, I pronounce it Slesinger. But it's a German name, and my grandfather came from Frankfurt and emigrated before the turn of the century.

Nevertheless, I had relatives who were here during the 30s and 40s who didn't survive. So Berlin, in a way, is full of ghosts. However remote they may be, there are ghosts, which one had to deal with.

Humour or suspense, what is more important for you in this film?

Both. I'm sorry to be equivocal, but it seems to me, and I like humour with suspense. I mean, I think it is wonderful that the audience are on the edge of their seats watching a story unfold, and then at a most tense moment, or the idea is tense, that you turn the tables on them and make them laugh. I think that in one way, theoretically, they're quite uncomfortable bedfellows, but in another, they're essential bedfellows.

It's wonderful to be able to do that. If I've learned anything from Hitchcock, who was a master, it was the fact that he could use humour and suspense together in a movie. And I love that.

Thinking of Berlin in the 50s, do you feel something like nostalgia?

I didn't go to Berlin till the early 60s, and I well remember coming to the Berlin Film Festival in 1961 or 2, forget which. And I'm not a very good film festival devotee. I like to go and do other things. I can't do more than two films a day maximum, except when I'm on a jury and I have to see more, and I can't bear it. And I remember when I first came to Berlin, the opera wasn't on in the Deutsche Oper.

So I used to go across Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin to visit the Staatsoper. And it was an unforgettable experience going from the brightness of West Berlin into the absolute depressing dark ruin that was East Berlin with all those people standing watching the neon news sign over the wall. So the contrast was very marked and then suddenly finding on the Unter den Linden also pretty dark, the one patch of light came from the opera house and an apparently sumptuous performance of “Der Rosenkavalier” and in the bar one or two very expensive sandwiches which nobody could afford or a chocolate cake.

And yet people dressed in their best. What was their best. Enjoying this performance. Unforgettable experience for me. And that's my memory. First of Berlin. Later, many years later I came back, again did the same thing, went across for the opera. And it was rather a different place then, it had begun to be more lively.

Now there's a lot of liveliness in areas of East Berlin, but still it seems like a more deserted. You go back and you walk down the Kurfürstendamm and it's a totally different experience. So it's still, the difference is there. And yet some of the most beautiful buildings in Berlin are in the east, of course. But it's an interesting city. Undeniably an interesting, extraordinary city, which I didn't have the opportunity to appreciate when I was making the film because one was working so hard.

So I found over the years that if you're working in the most gorgeous places on earth, they all come down to, you know, getting up early, shooting, grabbing a sandwich, going to bed. So I've never really enjoyed Paris or Florence under those conditions either.

The end of the film is like the end of another famous film. What is your intention and can you explain us why? Casablanca.

I think it's in your mind, because Isabella Rossellini was not cast because of a resemblance to her mother. I have to confess that I'd seen bits of “Casablanca”, but never the airport scene, until after I'd finished this movie. And the difference is that there's fog, a plane of the 50s, and a kind of a parting of the ways of the characters in both films. But it's quite a different story. And there the difference ends.

Of course, people are going to say, in fact they already have, and it infuriates Isabella Rossellini. She says, you know, “No, I wasn't cast because of the connotation of Casablanca and my mother.” Indeed, she wasn't.

Last question. You worked in the DEFA studios. What is your impression? What do you think about it?

I think DEFA studios have the possibility of being a very big international studio. It's got to be modernized. It's quite well placed. It too has ghosts, but one forgets that. You know, they're very quick to sell it as the old Ufa studios where Marlene made “Der blaue Engel”, which they boast about, and this is where Fritz Lang made “Metropolis” and those kinds of things.

But one must remember that for many, many years, since the 30s, it has been under two totally totalitarian regimes, making propaganda films, or films that certainly had to toe a party line. So it has ghosts.

We had an interesting experience there, because there was, there's still competitiveness between what was East and West, and there was an incident with a man that owned a camera car that belonged to the studio, and we had decided to use a more modern camera car from West Berlin. And there was every move made to try and get us stopped. Police stopped us finally on the last day of shooting because this man from Babelsberg had been all along trying to tell the police we were overloading the car and that it wasn't equipped properly to suit the purpose we were using it for. And there was a very...

I left Berlin on the heels of an enormous row with this man. And the suspicion between the two prior sides was marked. It was interesting.

Okay, thank you very much.