«Metropolitan» is in part the product of the socio-vocational distress of those who made it. For nearly all of us it was a first chance to do jobs we had long wanted. There was one given: a delightfully low budget. Rather than make the usual grainy film on some gritty subject, my idea was to photograph the most elegant Manhattan story possible. New-York is at its most beautiful between Thanksgiving and Christmas time,a nd for next to no cost we had a set worth billions. Another visual attraction was the image of an essentially black and white subject, the pale young people in evening clothes in interior settings of cream and gold, to be filmed in color. Finally there was the absence in American cinema of accurate portraits of the traditional upper class. As even many of its members hate the idea of there being an American upper class, I was not surprised that, rather than the blank indifference which film ideas usually inspire, this one initially attracted antagonism. By treating the characters ironically, I hoped to leave viewers free to approach the comedy from their own point of view. ultimately I became more interested in the characters' humorous souls than their social predicament. Whit Stillman