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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

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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
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More quotes by Michael Haneke

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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
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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
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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
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A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation.
Michael Haneke
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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
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It's a disease of critics that once they've labeled someone, it's very hard to change their perspective. It's laziness.
Michael Haneke
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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.
Michael Haneke
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I love actors, both my parents were actors, and the work with actors is the most enjoyable part of making a film. It's important that they feel protected and are confident they won't be betrayed. When you create that atmosphere of trust, it's in the bag - the actors will do everything to satisfy you.
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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
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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
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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
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Like every filmmaker, I make my films to reach the widest audience possible.
Michael Haneke
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I consider all my films experiments.
Michael Haneke
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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.
Michael Haneke
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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.
Michael Haneke
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A feature film is twenty-four lies per second.
Michael Haneke
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I'm interested in seeing films that confront me with new things, with films that make me question myself, with films that help me to reflect on subjects that I hadn't thought about before, films that help me progress and advance.
Michael Haneke
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Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself
Michael Haneke
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Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.
Michael Haneke
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As a private person, professionally I am invisible.
Michael Haneke