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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
Like
Flight
Film
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" Of course, we avoid death. To know something is inevitable is one thing. To accept, to truly feel it... that's different. "
Michael Haneke
Inevitable
Know
Feel
" 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
Me
You
Know
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
Film
You
Good
" On the set I make jokes I can't get too involved, or it turns into sentimental soup. I try to keep it light. "
Michael Haneke
Keep
Light
Soup
" As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody. "
Michael Haneke
Genre
Make
You
" 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
Violence
Funny
Cinema
" 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
Father
Relationship
Me
" 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
Us
War
Civil War
" 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
People
Think
Old Age
" I make my films because I'm affected by a situation, by something that makes me want to reflect on it, that lends itself to an artistic reflection. I always aim to look directly at what I'm dealing with. I think it's a task of dramatic art to confront us with things that in the entertainment industry are usually swept under the rug. "
Michael Haneke
Me
Art
Look
" 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
Enough
Work
Privilege
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
You
Television
Work
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
Audience
Watch
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. "
Michael Haneke
Funny
Mother
You
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
Never
Expectations
Book
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
Parents
Romantic
Own
" Usually music is used to hide a film's problems. "
Michael Haneke
Problems
Hide
Film
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
Unexpected
Perception
People
" It's harder to write a story with just two people in a room than with 50 characters. "
Michael Haneke
Write
Two
People
" An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message. "
Michael Haneke
Answers
Questions
Who
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
Violence
You
Trying
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
Beginning
Ideas
Impossible
" A feature film is twenty-four lies per second. "
Michael Haneke
Feature
Film
Twenty-Four
" 'Funny Games' was conceived as a provocation. My other films are different. If people feel my other films are, or respond to them as provocation, then that's quite different. 'Funny Games' is the only one of mine where my intention was to provoke the audience. "
Michael Haneke
Intention
Feel
Audience
" 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
Doing
World
Living
" 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
Think
Challenges
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. "
Michael Haneke
Answer
Cinema
Home
" 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
Cultures
Me
Here
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
Parents
You
Create
" All movies assault the viewer in one way or another. "
Michael Haneke
Assault
One Way
Way