This is a transcript of the interview on the French DVD of Cat O'Nine Tails translated by Emmanuel Denis.

Q: So, after "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage ", you made "The Cat O'Nine Tails". Why did you decide to make another giallo? Because the first one was successful? If the first one did not work, would you have made a second giallo?
DA: No, certainly not. But during the editing, the mixing, and the post-production, I had an idea for a new giallo. As the movie was a success, I already had an idea for a new movie. And I shot the film directly after the previous one. I made two movies in two years. It's the only time in my life. I already had the idea in my head, and I wrote the movie immediately.
Q: Had you learnt something with "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" which you used in "The Cat O'Nine Tails"? Did you feel like like you were making big progress from one movie to the other?
DA: No. I think there's been a decline with my second one. I was not very satisfied with my second film. When I saw my movie cut and finished, at the first projection, I was a little disappointed. I found it was too influenced by American movies. I felt that I had lost a little of the originality of my first movie. My originality, my personality. I say sincerely that the second movie disappointed me a little... And I was angry with myself. That's why I've waited one year after my second movie, before the third one.
Q: Though the audience liked it a lot. It was successful.
DA: It just made me angrier! The audience liked it because it was more American. I did not like that (Laughter). It was something against which I was fighting. I would rather be closer to the French films noirs than to the Americans film noirs, the American gangster stories. So when I saw what it was compared to, I was not very happy. It is not a movie that I completely reject because there are scenes which are in my style, which suits me. But it's the movie in my career that I like the least.
Q: It did not grow old badly. It's got a nice 70's touch.
DA: It's true, but... Anyway I am here to tell you how I feel about this movie, and it disappointed me.
Q: About the scenes of murder, it's difficult not to repeat yourself. Were you trying to avoid making a scene of murder you've already made a few days before, or a few years before? Is it worrying you?
DA: Yes, but not on the set. It's during the writing. When I make the script and the storyboard. It's here that I try not to repeat myself, not to do the same thing again. But I have a special imagination, a little cruel, especially for the scenes of murder. It was not difficult to be inventive, to show some originality.
Q: In the murder scenes, especially in your first movies, eroticism is very present.
DA: In my recent movies too... It's a sort of transposition of the murder, which becomes a very close meeting between two people, who are not necessarily a man and a woman.. It can be changed. It is not the man who is a murderer, but it's the woman. It's a murder who goes beyond homicide. It becomes a kind of intimate knowledge, with the phallic symbols everywhere. It requests a peculiar acting from the actors. I told them: "You must express both orgasm and pain, despair." It is also needed to show something which is closer to a dream, a nightmare, than to reality.
Q: In your movies, the killer is an artist.
DA: Sometimes yes. He chooses his script, the set, the moment, the music, the colour, the lightning...
Q: In fact, you are the killer.
DA: Yes, it is me. But these are my dreams. It's not really me. I am like Edgar Alan Poe who was dreaming all the time. He was dreaming thanks to opium and alcohol. I, I don't drink, and I don't take opium. But I try to have nightmares, like the great master.
Q: You love Edgar Alan Poe. Is there a movie in which he has peculiarly influenced you?
DA: In all my movies. I have made one movie influenced by the work of Edgar Alan Poe, "Two Evil Eyes", in which I made "The Black Cat". He is present in all my movies, like a spiritual father. He and the great Sigmund Freud who is always present in my work.
Q: What do you answer to people who accuse you of playing with violence, to make it look beautiful, like fireworks?
DA: I was told this ten or twenty years ago, but these days, people don't say that anymore. This is artistic expression, it's not a butcher's shop! These are movies with actors. This is no propaganda for violence. It is fake blood. Everybody knows that. Pictures are more dangerous in the news on TV, with slaughter from the whole world.
Q: You enjoy manipulating the audience. You are the cat, and the audience is the mouse?
DA: It's a dialogue with the audience. I'm not only telling a story. I like to tell people: "You think that? You are conformists, so I will change everything to make you face your passivity and your conformity." Sometimes it's a game, like in my first movie in which there are the black dressed man the white dressed woman. Everybody thinks white is purity and black is evil. And, on the contrary, the evil was white, and the poor victim was dressed in black. I've made it several times in my movies.
Q: You enjoy breaking the rules.
DA: Yes, the conformist rules which are in the American movies. Though, American movies are interesting. Americans have invented lots of technical things, new things. But they have brought many conformist, easy and commercial things too.
Q: When you shoot a movie, do you think about about success or do you shoot it for yourself?
DA : No, not for me. I make the movie for somebody I don't know, for the others, for the audience. Not for the audience in general. I'm not trying to reach the unanimity, that everybody says: "Ah! Titanic...!". I am not making the "Titanic" that everybody enjoys. I know that my movies have an audience, a part of the audience. I, I am trying to make movies which are a little personal. When I write or when I shoot a movie, I think about somebody, about an imaginary audience. A little theatre with 200 people in it. I show this movie - I always make this dream - I show this movie and I know each of the 200 people. They are with me in this adventure.
Q: In fact, it's your audience?
DA: Yes.
Q: You talk about Freud. What Freud is important to you for?
DA: It is not important for my movies only. I discovered my first Freud book thanks to a teacher. It was the discovery of the unconscious. That's why, each time I go to Vienna, I go to the house of Freud, to make a pilgrimage to my spiritual father's place. With all his books, his inventions, , the great journeys he made inside us, he is a great revolutionary, a huge man.

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