If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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 only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You've got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven's "Pastoral." A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.
When Chaplin found a voice to say what was on his mind, he was like a child of eight writing lyrics for Beethoven's Ninth.
