Quotes by Michael Haneke

“Manipulation is constant in the media. Even the images of reality on television are manipulated. The difference in this film is that the manipulation is there to make you aware that you are being manipulated, that you can be manipulated.”

“I wanted to confront someone with something he had done as a child. That was the general idea, guilt and consequences. Then I wanted to make a film with Daniel Auteuil. And the third thing, I saw a documentary about the 1961 massacre. I was stunned that in a country like France it could be buried for so long.”

“Its because I am a coward. At school, when there were fights, Id run away. I have always been scared of physical violence. Perhaps thats the reason. But it also angers me to see gratuitous violence, wrapped up like chewing gum to be consumed. Its irritating; its cynical.”

“I am a coward,”

“Most modern American films are revolting. They are pro-Bush propaganda of the worst kind, using the same techniques of persuasion that the Nazis used.”

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.

I like the multiplicity of books, because each book is different in the mind of each reader. Its the same with this film - if 300 people are in a cinema watching it, they will all see a different film, so in a way there are thousands of different versions of Caché (Hidden). The point being that, despite what TV shows us, and what the news stories tell us, there is never just one truth, there is only personal truth.

[on his satisfaction as an artist] In terms of cinema and filmmaking, there are certainly the unexpected gifts that the actors bestow on you. Film is always a question of compromises with respect to what you originally intended.

I do think that our perception of reality is fragmentary, and in 20th-century literature, it’s totally normal to not describe reality as something whole and completely transportable and explicable. That’s been accepted in novels. But genre films always pretend that reality is transportable, which means that it is explicable.

There are those who see film and take it seriously as an artistic medium, and others who go to have a good time, to simply be entertained. I have to be careful , because it sounds like I am condemning, or criticizing what people are doing. I have nothing against that, in the same way that some people like rock music or to go dancing, and other people like to go to a Beethoven concert. Its just that Im more interested in the one than the other.

My films are intended as polemical statements against the American barrel down cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.

[on why he considers Marlon Brando and Jean-Louis Trintignant to be his favorite actors] They dont externalize or project everything. They keep a mystery within themselves, and that I think is the sign of a truly great actor, to be able to maintain that.

Im lucky enough to be able to make films and so I dont need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears and all those things with my work. Thats an enormous privilege. Thats 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.

Because Im the author of my screenplays I know what Im looking for. Its true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but its also a question of working with patience and love.

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

To me, its far more efficient to mobilize the imagination. Its 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.

And I dont 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.

People expect me to be dark and gloomy, then write that Im a jolly chap, and after all, that is what I am. I think its a case of an absolute romantic naivety that there should be a parallel between the work and the artist.

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.