Quote

What we're doing for another person is more important than what we're feeling for them.

Michael Haneke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Michael Haneke
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 23
Film Actor
Film Critic
Film Director
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
University Teacher
Writer
München
Another
Persons
Person
Important
Feeling
Feelings

More quotes by Michael Haneke

Image
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
Image
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. So my approach with the narrator is to question that, to leave that open, to underline the fact that this is uncertain.
Michael Haneke
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I’ve been accused of ‘raping’ the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely — all movies assault the viewer in one way or another.
Michael Haneke
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Like every filmmaker, I make my films to reach the widest audience possible.
Michael Haneke
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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