Skip to content

The Austrians have completed the feat of turning Beethoven into an Austrian, and Hitler into a German.

— Billy Wilder

Die Österreicher haben das Kunststück fertiggebracht, aus Beethoven einen Österreicher und aus Hitler einen Deutschen zu machen.

Original text (German)

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

As quoted in DER SPIEGEL (16 May 1994))

More quotes by Billy Wilder

Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.

The New Hollywood : American Movies in the '70s (1975)

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.

I just made pictures I would've liked to see.

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.

A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don't bury our dead. When you think it's out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, My father is an idiot.

All Billy Wilder quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Billy Wilder (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.