Michael Haneke Quotes About Film

Quotes about: Film

• 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

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

  Michael Haneke

  Way, Film, Express Yourself

• 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

• Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.

  Michael Haneke

  Thinking, Excellence, Directors

• 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

  Awards, Important, Directors

• 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

  Directors, Violence, Film

• 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

  Cutting, Want, Film

• 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

  Religious, Impossible Things, Political

  Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

• 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

• 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

  Art, Names, Violence

  "Michael Haneke: 'There is as much evil in us as there is good'". Interview With Elizabeth Day, www.theguardian.com. October 24, 2009.

• It became a gamble to myself whether I was able to do the exact same film ["Funny Games"]under very different circumstances.

  Michael Haneke

  Games, Different, Able

• The smaller and younger kids are, the more patient you have to be. But if they're gifted, then it's a wonderful present that you're given by having a child like that in your film... more so than in the case of actors because, for example, if you ask them to play a lion, they don't then play a lion, they actually are a lion. So, a gifted child is something very special. On the other hand, if a child has no gifts in that way it's absolutely hopeless and there's nothing you can do!

  Michael Haneke

  Children, Kids, Hands

  "The White Ribbon - Michael Haneke interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

• 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

• A feature film is twenty-four lies per second.

  Michael Haneke

  Lying, Twenties, Four

  "Biography/ Trivia". www.imdb.com.

• 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

• 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

  Thinking, Simple, Giving

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• 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

  Dog, Hurt, Animal

• Of course there are many films about the period of Fascism itself but I don't know of any about that period beforehand. But it wasn't that specific fact that they weren't there that got me to think about this in the first place. It's not what led to the basic idea for the film, although it became apparent when I began to think about it.

  Michael Haneke

  Thinking, Ideas, Firsts

  Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

• 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

• As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.

  Michael Haneke

  Film, Parody, Genre

  "Decade: Michael Haneke Talks 'Code Inconnu' and 'The Piano Teacher'". www.indiewire.com. December 8, 2009.

• My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.

  Michael Haneke

  Distance, Empowerment, Cinema

• 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.

• 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

  Games, Video, Violence

• The trouble is that when you read criticisms about the other films that I've made you get the impression that they're all about themes, or problems, or ideas. But those are actually things that develop out of characters, out of images and out of other things. These more abstract things develop while working on the material, and out of it. It's not a theoretical exercise from the outset.

  Michael Haneke

  Character, Exercise, Ideas

  Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

• 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

Page 1 of 2

← Prev

1

2

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin