Michael Haneke Quotes

• You can use your means in a good and bad way. In German-speaking art, we had such a bad experience with the Third Reich, when stories and images were used to tell lies. After the war, literature was careful not to do the same, which is why writers began to reflect on the stories they told and to make readers part of their texts. I do the same.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Series, Violence

• 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.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Honest, Stimulating

• When my first film ‘The Seventh Continent’ was presented here 12 years ago, non-Austrian spectators would come up to me and say, ‘Is Austria that terrible?’, whereas for me it wasn’t about Austria but about highly industrialised cultures everywhere.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Cultures, Continent

• When I first envisioned ‘Funny Games’ in the mid-1990s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema, its violence, its naivety, the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films, violence is made consumable.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Cinema, Reaction

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mobilize, Efficient

• To be perfectly honest, I think that as I’m growing older, I’m just growing more impatient. I’ll be very happy if at some point people say, ‘Michael’s grown wiser and softer in his old age.’ But we’ll have to wait and see what my next project is.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Impatient, Perfectly

• There is just as much evil in all of us as there is good. We’re all continuously guilty, even if we’re not doing it intentionally to be evil. Here we are sitting in luxury hotels, living it up on the the backs of others in the third world. We all have a guilty conscience, but we do very little about it.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Luxury, Continuously

• 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

  Topics in Laughter

  Tags in Dealing, Recognition

• ‘The White Ribbon’ had to be in German because of the subject matter, that was clear. But in the case of ‘Amour,’ it could have taken place in any country.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Subject, Ribbon

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Directors, Standard

• My mother as a young girl went out with a young SS officer and she didn’t really know what was going on – she just liked the uniform. When he told her about the things that he did, she was disgusted and broke up with him.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Uniform, Officer

• My father and I had a good relationship, it was very relaxed. He had a lot of humour. He looked a little bit like me, although he had no beard. He had the appearance of a very elegant British-looking man.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Elegant, Relaxed

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Spectator, Reassured

• It’s unbearable when someone changes around you. Just imagine that your life partner changes, then it is difficult to cope with. Or your mother. Or your father. They were strong and now they’re like a baby – it’s not so funny.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Unbearable, Difficult

• In all of my work I’m trying to create a dialogue, in which I want to provoke the recipients, stimulate them to use their own imaginations. I don’t just say things recipients want to hear, flatter their egos or comfort them by agreeing with them. I have to provoke them, to take them as seriously as I take myself.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Dialogue, Recipients

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Producers, Directors

• I’m not someone who enjoys long talks, long rehearsals. I’m very technical: I tell my actors, you come in, you sit down, you pick up a coffee, you look here, you say the line. We try it with the cameras rolling, and if it doesn’t work, we adjust it until it does. It’s very simple.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Technical, Pick

• I’m lucky enough to be able to make films and so I don’t need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears and all those things with my work. That’s an enormous privilege. That’s the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Psychiatrist, Privilege

• I think it’s a little simplistic to explain a work through the psychology of its author. In other words, that Haneke has emotional problems, so I don’t have to take his films seriously. By using this argument, the viewer retreats from the challenges of the film.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Viewer, Emotional

• I want to make it clear: it’s not that I hate mainstream cinema. It’s perfectly fine. There are a lot of people who need to escape, because they are in very difficult situations, so they have the right to escape from the world. But this has nothing to do with an art form.

  Michael Haneke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Perfectly, Escape

Michael Haneke (54)

Birth:	23rd March, 1942
Nationality:	Austrian, German
Profession:	Director, Screenwriter

About

Michael Haneke is an Austrian film director and screenwriter best known for films such as Caché, Funny Games, The White Ribbon and Amour. His films often document the discontent and estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work. Besides working as a filmmaker he also teaches directing at the Film Academy Vienna.

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