Top 55 Michael Haneke Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A feature film is twenty-four lies per second.

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

On the set I make jokes I can’t get too involved, or it turns into sentimental soup. I try to keep it light.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Of course, we avoid death. To know something is inevitable is one thing. To accept, to truly feel it… that’s different.

‘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.

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.

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.

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.

As a private person, professionally I am invisible.

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.

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

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.

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

I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

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.

As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.

It’s a fact that people who are in a weakened position, whether physically or mentally, have this perception of the outer world as threatening. Everything that is unexpected or unknown is seen as a potential danger.

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

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 try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

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.

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.

As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.

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.

Usually music is used to hide a film’s problems.

Usually music is used to hide a film’s problems.

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.

Of course, we avoid death. To know something is inevitable is one thing. To accept, to truly feel it… that’s different.

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.

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.

All movies assault the viewer in one way or another.

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.

All movies assault the viewer in one way or another.

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.

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.