Top 44 Michael Haneke Quotes

What I like are films that take me seriously, that don’t treat me as more stupid than I am.

It’s impossible to consider living without ideals. However, when ideas lead to ideology, that’s a very dangerous thing. Ideology then leads to creating the image of an enemy, and it leads to the murder and massacre that we’ve seen since the beginning of time.

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.

I never suffered from the absence of a father. On the contrary, as a child I was more inclined to see men as a disturbing factor. It made things difficult for me when I started working as a director.

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.

Films for TV have to be much closer to the book, mainly because the objective with a TV movie that translates literature is to get the audience, after seeing this version, to pick up the book and read it themselves. My attitude is that TV can never really be any form of art, because it serves audience expectations.

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.

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.

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.

It’s harder to write a story with just two people in a room than with 50 characters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s a disease of critics that once they’ve labeled someone, it’s very hard to change their perspective. It’s laziness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m far more relaxed with German. I’m a control freak. I like to know exactly who’s saying and doing what.

And I don’t believe that children are innocent. In fact, no one seriously believes that. Just go to a playground and watch the kids playing in the sandbox! The romantic notion of the sweet child is simply the parents projecting their own wishes.

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.

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

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.

Awards are important for all directors because they improve your working conditions. You’re only as good as your last film, so if you get prizes or large audiences, then you get more money for your next film.

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.

As a private person, professionally I am invisible.

I learned my business in the theater and in television, particularly working with the actors. You can learn much more in the theater than directing a movie, because then you have no time when you are shooting a movie to really work with the actors. You have to learn this craft somewhere else.

I give the spectator the possibility of participating. The audience completes the film by thinking about it; those who watch must not be just consumers ingesting spoon-fed images.

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.

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.

An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.

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.

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.

Drama lives on conflict. If you’re trying to deal with social issues seriously, there’s no way of avoiding violence, which is so present in society.

‘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.

All movies assault the viewer in one way or another.

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.

I’m far more relaxed with German. I’m a control freak. I like to know exactly who’s saying and doing what.

I consider all my films experiments.

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.

I consider all my films experiments.

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.