Lilane Cavani (1933 - ) is an Italian film director and screenwriter.
“The capacity to be aware of the grey areas of life, instead of the black and white, and to be able to see that hate is inseparable and often indistinguishable from love, is not merely interesting, it is necessary for progress in public and private life,” says Liliana Cavani, in an attempt to defend her last film, The Night Porter, which won her commercial success, controversy and suspicion.
Cavani, accustomed to the vicissitudes of her profession, and two years battling for her project about Lou Andreas Salomé (writer, psychoanalyst and close friend of Rilke and Freud), did not bow down before my attack. “Look, in my films I try to see beyond simple definitions. We tend to make superficial separations between feelings and we cloud our insights with a moral system which is merely an instrument to make society function. If you care to look at our society, you might conclude that this moral system is rarely functional.
From "Liliane Cavani, Personal Films, Intimate Truths"
The Times of London, 1977
