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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

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Michael Haneke
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 23
Film Actor
Film Critic
Film Director
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
University Teacher
Writer
München
Temperament
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Melancholy
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More quotes by Michael Haneke

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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.
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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.
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A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation.
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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.
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Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That is one of the characteristics of fascism, the idea that the state can provide all of the answers for everyone.
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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.
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In German. I'm more sensitized to the details, to the emotions. In English, I wouldn't detect as much nuance.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Of course, we avoid death. To know something is inevitable is one thing. To accept, to truly feel it... that's different.
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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.
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I consider all my films an experiment, at least in my mind.
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What we're doing for another person is more important than what we're feeling for them.
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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