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" I'm far more relaxed with German. I'm a control freak. I like to know exactly who's saying and doing what. "
Michael Haneke
Doing
Control
Know
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" '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 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
Recognition
Laughter
Yourself
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
Work
Trying
Comfort
" 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
People
Art
Cinema
" 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. "
Michael Haneke
Try
World
Real
" 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
Work
Simple
Look
" 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
" 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
Experience
Bad
Art
" Usually music is used to hide a film's problems. "
Michael Haneke
Problems
Hide
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. "
Michael Haneke
Parents
Romantic
Own
" As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody. "
Michael Haneke
Genre
Make
You
" 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
" 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
Love
Know
Looking
" 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
" 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
" 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
Uniform
Girl
Young
" All movies assault the viewer in one way or another. "
Michael Haneke
Assault
One Way
Way
" 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
" 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
" 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
" As a private person, professionally I am invisible. "
Michael Haneke
Person
I Am
Invisible
" 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
Simple
Think
Answers