Michael Haneke Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Thinking, Giving, Watches

  56 Copy quote

• Writers and filmakers, that is, people who describe the world, suffer from an occupational disease. They never experience moments in life quite spontaneously. You always look at yourself from the outside. Even as a child I always observed myself and the world. I believe that everyone who chooses this path in any way, who chooses to be a describer of life, suffers from this condition. It's like a mental obsession. It can be a great pity too. It robs you of a certain joy in spontaneity.

  Michael Haneke

  Children, Believe, People

  45 Copy quote

• Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself

  Michael Haneke

  Way, Film, Express Yourself

  30 Copy quote

• An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.

  Michael Haneke

  Artist, Raises Questions, Giving

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Melancholy, Tendencies, Feels

  27 Copy quote

• I don't need a psychiatrist.
  I can sort out my fears with my work.
  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

  Artist, Order, Needs

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Imagination, Important

  "Michael Haneke Talks AMOUR, His Inspiration for the Film, His Casting Decisions, Physical and Emotional Demands of the Film and Shooting the Film in French". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. December 14, 2012.

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Home, Raises Questions, Different

  15 Copy quote

• I make my films because I'm affected by a situation, by something that makes me want to reflect on it, that lends itself to an artistic reflection. I always aim to look directly at what I'm dealing with. I think it's a task of dramatic art to confront us with things that in the entertainment industry are usually swept under the rug.

  Michael Haneke

  Art, Reflection, Thinking

  18 Copy quote

• Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.

  Michael Haneke

  Lying, Film

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Dream, Real, Trying

  "Michael Haneke: I try to get closer to reality, close to the contradictions". Interview with Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, metro.co.uk. November 15, 2012.

  14 Copy quote

• In general, in all my films, I choose to create a certain mistrust, rather than claiming that what I'm showing onscreen is an accurate reproduction of reality. I want people to question what they are seeing onscreen. In the same way as I used the narrator, I also used black and white, because it creates a distance toward what's being seen. I see the film as an artifact rather than a reliable reconstruction of a reality that we cannot know.

  Michael Haneke

  Distance, Black And White, Reality

  Source: film.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  War, Goes On, Way

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Two, People

  "Michael Haneke Talks AMOUR, His Inspiration for the Film, His Casting Decisions, Physical and Emotional Demands of the Film and Shooting the Film in French". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. December 14, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Want, Answers

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Risk, Trying

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. December 30, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Sweet, Children, Believe

  7 Copy quote

• My feeling, however, is that films that are open are more productive for the audience. The films that, if I'm in a cinema, and I'm watching a movie that answers all the questions that it raises, it's a film that bores me. In the same way, 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

  Moving, Book, Reading

  Source: film.avclub.com

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Coffee, Simple, Long

  4 Copy quote

• If someone's lying to us, then it's rare that we know that they're lying to us. It's only in bad films that you recognize immediately that an actor's playing in such a way that you can see that he's lying, and that's simply dumb. But to reach that, it requires that you make a film in such a way that a spectator feels compelled to find his own explanation. You want to lead the spectator to find his own interpretation. To ask questions rather than provide all of the answers. Doing that leads to open endings and open dramaturgy.

  Michael Haneke

  Lying, Dumb, Film

  Source: film.avclub.com

  9 Copy quote

• Usually music is used to hide a film's problems.

  Michael Haneke

  Problem, Film, Used

  "No pain, no gain". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. May 24, 2001.

  9 Copy quote

• I think that what's important as a director is to give your actors the feeling that they're protected, the feeling of confidence, the feeling that if they make mistakes, then as a director, you'll know how to help them. If you're able to convey that, then the actors will give you wonderful performances. As well as the author, you have to write scenes that give the actors the opportunity to show what they're capable of.

  Michael Haneke

  Mistake, Writing, Opportunity

  "Michael Haneke Talks AMOUR, His Inspiration for the Film, His Casting Decisions, Physical and Emotional Demands of the Film and Shooting the Film in French". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. December 14, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Mother, Baby, Strong

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Cinema, Done, Want

  "Michael Haneke Talks AMOUR, His Inspiration for the Film, His Casting Decisions, Physical and Emotional Demands of the Film and Shooting the Film in French". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. December 14, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Jumping, Giving, Flight

  9 Copy quote

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