Michael Haneke Quotes
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.
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.
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.
An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.
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.
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.
That is one of the characteristics of fascism, the idea that the state can provide all of the answers for everyone.
As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.
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.
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.
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.
What I like are films that take me seriously, that don't treat me as more stupid than I am.
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.
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.
It's much harder to write a script that involves two people in a single location than 20 people in 30 different locations.
Of course, we avoid death. To know something is inevitable is one thing. To accept, to truly feel it... that's different.
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.
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.
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.
I think watching a movie that simply confirms my feelings is a waste of time. That applies not only to movies, but also to books and every form of art.
Classicism becomes avant-garde when everyone else is doing their utmost to develop new stylistic forms. And I think it's healthy to return to classical forms.
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.
On the set I make jokes I can't get too involved, or it turns into sentimental soup. I try to keep it light.
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.
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 Quotes: "It became a gamble to myself whether I was able to do the exact same film ["Funny Games"]under very different circumstances."](https://www.quoteslyfe.com/images/collection3/quotations886/It-became-a-gamble-to-myself-whether-886340.jpg)
It became a gamble to myself whether I was able to do the exact same film ["Funny Games"]under very different circumstances.
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.
It's more enjoyable to shoot in a studio on a single location with two actors... if they are good.
What we're doing for another person is more important than what we're feeling for them.
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.
The dumber people are, the more they feel the need for a broad set of shoulders they can lay their head against.
It's a disease of critics that once they've labeled someone, it's very hard to change their perspective. It's laziness.
In German. I'm more sensitized to the details, to the emotions. In English, I wouldn't detect as much nuance.
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.
