Top 87 Michael Haneke Quotes

#1. Personally, I can't stand violence. In any standard American mainstream movie, there's 20 times more violence than in any one of my films, so I don't know why those directors aren't asked why they're such specialists for violence.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #71423
#2. I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #119860
#3. I never use soundtrack; it is always part of the story.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #120520
#4. It's much harder to write a script that involves two people in a single location than 20 people in 30 different locations.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #202206
#5. 'Funny Games' was conceived as a provocation. My other films are different. If people feel my other films are, or respond to them as provocation, then that's quite different. 'Funny Games' is the only one of mine where my intention was to provoke the audience.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #216723
#6. Of course I am a child of European culture. There are a number of great directors from which I learned, but there is nobody in particular I got inspired from.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #225331
#7. If I'm reading a book that doesn't leave me with questions, moving questions, that I feel confronted with, then for me it's a waste of time. I don't want to read a book that simply confirms what I already know.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #265807
#8. I'm not someone who enjoys long talks, long rehearsals. I'm very technical: I tell my actors, you come in, you sit down, you pick up a coffee, you look here, you say the line. We try it with the cameras rolling, and if it doesn't work, we adjust it until it does. It's very simple.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #338281
#9. When my first film 'The Seventh Continent' was presented here 12 years ago, non-Austrian spectators would come up to me and say, 'Is Austria that terrible?', whereas for me it wasn't about Austria but about highly industrialised cultures everywhere.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #343351
#10. A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #357863
#11. I want to be able to control things and that's very difficult to do if you're not 100% in a particular language. It makes you uncertain and it makes you nervous.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #378735
#12. When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema, its violence, its naivety, the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films, violence is made consumable.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #416816
#13. I learned my business in the theater and in television, particularly working with the actors. You can learn much more in the theater than directing a movie, because then you have no time when you are shooting a movie to really work with the actors. You have to learn this craft somewhere else.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #418106
#14. I'm far more relaxed with German. I'm a control freak. I like to know exactly who's saying and doing what.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #436304
#15. There are really two types of laughter on the part of the spectator. There is the laughter of recognition - which means seeing things you're familiar with and laughing at yourself. But there's also hysterical laughter - a way of dealing with the things we see that upset us.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #486794
#16. I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #487408
#17. At its best, film should be like a ski jump. It should give the viewer the option of taking flight, while the act of jumping is left up to him.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #491876
#18. My father and I had a good relationship, it was very relaxed. He had a lot of humour. He looked a little bit like me, although he had no beard. He had the appearance of a very elegant British-looking man.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #502360
#19. It's a fact that people who are in a weakened position, whether physically or mentally, have this perception of the outer world as threatening. Everything that is unexpected or unknown is seen as a potential danger.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #506009
#20. My mother as a young girl went out with a young SS officer and she didn't really know what was going on - she just liked the uniform. When he told her about the things that he did, she was disgusted and broke up with him.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #509725
#21. If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #515107
#22. I want to make it clear: it's not that I hate mainstream cinema. It's perfectly fine. There are a lot of people who need to escape, because they are in very difficult situations, so they have the right to escape from the world. But this has nothing to do with an art form.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #523653
#23. Unfortunately, you're helpless when people interpret your work wrongly. There are simply people who can't or won't understand or accept what you're trying to do. When you take the risk of expressing yourself in public, you have to open yourself to that possibility.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #557681
#24. In German. I'm more sensitized to the details, to the emotions. In English, I wouldn't detect as much nuance.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #560461
#25. I'm interested in seeing films that confront me with new things, with films that make me question myself, with films that help me to reflect on subjects that I hadn't thought about before, films that help me progress and advance.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #597218
#26. The difficulty, then, is when you create a church, an institution, and you create a dogma. When you create an ideology, that's the danger. Communism, too, is a beautiful idea, but millions of people died when communism became an ideology.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #627863
#27. Drama lives on conflict. If you're trying to deal with social issues seriously, there's no way of avoiding violence, which is so present in society.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #641396
#28. To me, it's far more efficient to mobilize the imagination. It's far more efficient to hear a creaking step, for example, than to see the face of a monster, which usually looks ridiculous, and where you know that the blood is ketchup.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #660803
#29. To decide to film a movie again shot by shot, you must be masochistic to a certain degree because it is a much greater challenge.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #663026
#30. Of course, we avoid death. To know something is inevitable is one thing. To accept, to truly feel it ... that's different.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #672524
#31. All movies assault the viewer in one way or another.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #674153
#32. You become a film critic because you're interested in film. I don't know whether knowing so much about cinema leads you to make better films, but it certainly can't hurt.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #678859
#33. Even the most elitist director or author who claims that he doesn't care if his works are seen or not, then I have to think that he's either a liar or a hypocrite.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #680055
#34. It's a disease of critics that once they've labeled someone, it's very hard to change their perspective. It's laziness.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #694795
#35. What I like are films that take me seriously, that don't treat me as more stupid than I am.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #697184
#36. 'The White Ribbon' had to be in German because of the subject matter, that was clear. But in the case of 'Amour,' it could have taken place in any country.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #712095
#37. I like to write for actors I know and with whom I've worked before. You can write to their strengths and weaknesses and write roles that are better suited to them.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #718991
#38. It is boring to have all the answers. Only political people have answers.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #740137
#39. I'm not really a happy person. It's a question of temperament. I have a tendency toward melancholy. You can feel quite happily melancholic.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #766257
#40. It's more enjoyable to shoot in a studio on a single location with two actors ... if they are good.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #790787
#41. Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #821619
#42. You'll see more violence in any television crime series than you will in my films ... Art is there to have a stimulating effect, if it earns its name. You have to be honest, that's the only thing.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #860995
#43. To be perfectly honest, I think that as I'm growing older, I'm just growing more impatient. I'll be very happy if at some point people say, 'Michael's grown wiser and softer in his old age.' But we'll have to wait and see what my next project is.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #869551
#44. An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #880224
#45. Because in the feudal system of that period at least 80% of people lived in villages, so it's very simple to get a cross-section of society in a single village. You get the microcosm of the social macrocosm.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #890447
#46. People expect me to be dark and gloomy, then write that I'm a jolly chap, and after all, that is what I am. I think it's a case of an absolute romantic naivety that there should be a parallel between the work and the artist.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #895004
#47. Mainstream cinema raises questions only to immediately provide an answer to them, so they can send the spectator home reassured. If we actually had those answers, then society would appear very different from what it is.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #903019
#48. People have been educated to expect answers, even before the questions come along. It's the TV principle. You offer three possible answers before the questions come to relax and calm the audience.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #917380
#49. I think it's a little simplistic to explain a work through the psychology of its author. In other words, that Haneke has emotional problems, so I don't have to take his films seriously. By using this argument, the viewer retreats from the challenges of the film.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1020568
#50. I'm lucky enough to be able to make films and so I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears and all those things with my work. That's an enormous privilege. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1035884
#51. And if there was one title that could be applied to all my films, it would be 'Civil War' - not civil war in the way we know it, but the daily war that goes on between us all.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1073313
#52. Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1092348
#53. And I don't believe that children are innocent. In fact, no one seriously believes that. Just go to a playground and watch the kids playing in the sandbox! The romantic notion of the sweet child is simply the parents projecting their own wishes.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1124548
#54. Classicism becomes avant-garde when everyone else is doing their utmost to develop new stylistic forms. I think it's healthy to return to classical forms.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1175418
#55. Like every filmmaker, I make my films to reach the widest audience possible.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1202672
#56. The dumber people are, the more they feel the need for a broad set of shoulders they can lay their head against.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1241737
#57. Awards are important for all directors because they improve your working conditions. You're only as good as your last film, so if you get prizes or large audiences, then you get more money for your next film.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1277099
#58. [on why he considers Marlon Brando and Jean-Louis Trintignant to be his favorite actors] They don't externalize or project everything. They keep a mystery within themselves, and that I think is the sign of a truly great actor, to be able to maintain that.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1287788
#59. Well, the first thing I had to do was to read a lot. First of all, about education ... and looking at education from the Middle Ages right through to the 20th Century. The second major area was country life in the 19th Century, which I don't know much about these days.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1289892
#60. Usually music is used to hide a film's problems.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1302107
#61. If you do an original film and you want to cut a scene out you do it. But when you do a shot by shot remake you don't have that option and every scene has to work again.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1327552
#62. Films that are entertainments give simple answers but I think that's ultimately more cynical, as it denies the viewer room to think. If there are more answers at the end, then surely it is a richer experience.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1336337
#63. Because I'm the author of my screenplays I know what I'm looking for. It's true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but it's also a question of working with patience and love.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1378309
#64. It became a gamble to myself whether I was able to do the exact same film ["Funny Games"]under very different circumstances.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1383685
#65. Pornography, it seems to me, is no different from war films or propaganda films in that it tries to make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive elements of life consumable

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1435453
#66. If you go with the principle, you should go with the principle. If I really saw the subject very differently than ten years ago, I would have done a different movie.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1447026
#67. On the set I make jokes I can't get too involved, or it turns into sentimental soup. I try to keep it light.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1469643
#68. It's unbearable when someone changes around you. Just imagine that your life partner changes, then it is difficult to cope with. Or your mother. Or your father. They were strong and now they're like a baby - it's not so funny.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1487527
#69. I never suffered from the absence of a father. On the contrary, as a child I was more inclined to see men as a disturbing factor. It made things difficult for me when I started working as a director.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1495366
#70. It's impossible to consider living without ideals. However, when ideas lead to ideology, that's a very dangerous thing. Ideology then leads to creating the image of an enemy, and it leads to the murder and massacre that we've seen since the beginning of time.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1515647
#71. Never say no. It always depends on what's possible. I don't care so much where it is; it's what I want to do that matters.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1567269
#72. I consider all my films experiments.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1586366
#73. What we're doing for another person is more important than what we're feeling for them.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1600225
#74. I think that religion is an integral part of human needs, but the question also is how you understand religion.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1654122
#75. I consider all my films an experiment, at least in my mind.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1671971
#76. In my film "Benny's Video," I depicted violence but I failed to say all that I had to say, so I wanted to continue the dialog and that's why I did "Funny Games." The irony is that after I shot "Funny Games," but it hadn't been released at all anywhere.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1677440
#77. I give the spectator the possibility of participating. The audience completes the film by thinking about it; those who watch must not be just consumers ingesting spoon-fed images.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1733708
#78. When making a film, I'm never concerned about whether the theme is new or whether it's been done before in cinema or not. I'm led to make films if there's a theme that interests me or I experience something in my own life that confronts me with something that I want to deal with.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1734970
#79. As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1739561
#80. For me, it's always difficult when a historical film claims to depict or represent a reality that none of us can know, that is always different. It's always the case. We never know what happened then.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1765677
#81. A feature film is twenty-four lies per second.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1784866
#82. As a private person, professionally I am invisible.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1810864
#83. It's harder to write a story with just two people in a room than with 50 characters.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1818689
#84. [on his satisfaction as an artist] In terms of cinema and filmmaking, there are certainly the unexpected gifts that the actors bestow on you. Film is always a question of compromises with respect to what you originally intended.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1852654
#85. It's the duty of art to ask questions, not to provide answers. And if you want a clearer answer, I'll have to pass.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1857689
#86. It could be Fascist, religious or political - it's always the same model that operates in these circumstances, and it's that which is the actuality of this film. Therefore, it's not specifically an explanation of German Fascism because that would be an impossible thing to do in any case.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1864824
#87. You cannot hurt animals, so what do I do? I kill the dog first. Then I do it with the boy. You're not supposed to break the illusion of this being a film, so I make the actor talk to the audience. Provocation is the principle of the whole film [ Funny Games]. It is very ironic.

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke Quotes #1870346

Famous Authors

Popular Topics

Scroll to Top