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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.
Michael Haneke
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Michael Haneke
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 23
Film Actor
Film Critic
Film Director
Screenwriter
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University Teacher
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München
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More quotes by Michael Haneke
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
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.
Michael Haneke
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
Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself
Michael Haneke
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
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
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
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
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
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
I always seek to mobilize, to call on the imagination of the spectator. It's well-known that the images that are created by one's imagination are far stronger than any that I can show. In fact, it's an error, a widespread error in mainstream cinema, to always want to show things and to depict things.
Michael Haneke
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
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
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
In German. I'm more sensitized to the details, to the emotions. In English, I wouldn't detect as much nuance.
Michael Haneke
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
I think that religion is an integral part of human needs, but the question also is how you understand religion.
Michael Haneke
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.
Michael Haneke
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
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.
Michael Haneke
