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Michael Haneke
Director / Screenwriter
1942 - 
Born March 23, Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Key Production Countries: Austria, Germany, France
Key Genres: Drama, Psychological Drama, Crime Drama, Family Drama
Key Collaborators: Veit Heiduschka (Producer), Christopher Kanter (Production Designer), Christian Berger (Cinematographer), Margaret Menegoz (Producer), Udo Samel (Leading Character Player), Susanne Lothar (Leading Character Player), Maurice Benichou (Leading Character Player), Jurgen Jurges (Cinematographer), Nadine Muse (Editor), Marie Homolkova (Editor)

Highly Recommended: Caché (2005)*^
Recommended: The Seventh Continent (1989), Funny Games (1997)*, The White Ribbon (2009)^
Worth a Look: Code Unknown (2000), Time of the Wolf (2003)
Approach with Caution: Benny's Video (1992), 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1995), The Piano Teacher (2001)^
* Listed in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films section; ^ Listed in TSPDT's 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films section.

 
 
 
Links: [ Amazon ] [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Strictly Film School ] [ Wikipedia ] [ Central Europe Review Article ] [ Kinoeye Interview ] [ Bright Lights Film Journal Interview (2005 ] [ Sight & Sound Article (2005) ] [ Time Out Interview (2007) ] [ Guardian Article (2008) ] [ Film Comment Interview (2009) ] [ A.V. Club Interview (2009) ]
Books: [ Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image ] [ A Companion to Michael Haneke ] [ On Michael Haneke (Contemporary Film and Television Series) ] [ Funny Frames: Studying the Films of Michael Haneke ]
 
Hidden (2005)The Seventh Continent (1989)Funny Games (1997)Code Unknown (2000)
 
     
  "Most of Michael Haneke's films shock, not so much with their violence, but with the cold and ambivalent depiction of that violence. Haneke, one of Austria's most celebrated directors (although he works in France), intends his films to be critiques of European society and of American cinema." - Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)  
     
  "Haneke has put European cinema back into the premier league (I won't say singlehandedly, because frankly the Eurozone seems to be teeming with gifted directors in a way that it hasn't been since the 1970s), but while others are promising, he is unquestionably in the same class as Antonioni, Fassbinder, or Godard. His films are classics: they are perfect and they are profound... Haneke's films think, whereas the arty end of US cinema today seems to have disappeared up its own self-satisfaction. But at the same time, the visual beauty of his cinema is beguiling: he achieves a photographic and theatrical clarity that is somehow quintessentially of our time, of the digital age, and yet as rich as anything in cinematic history." - Jonathon Jones (The Guardian, 2010)  
     
  "Cheerfully wishing his audience a "disturbing evening" at a London retrospective of his films, director Michael Haneke insists that he is an optimist at heart, despite all of the relentlessly bleak carnage and deeply disturbing imagery so vividly painted and seared into the mind of anyone who has had the uncomfortable experience of viewing his work." - Jason Buchanan (All-Movie Guide)  
     
  "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  
     
  "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." - Michael Haneke  
     
 
Please note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we haven't seen include Funny Games (2007).
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"Benny's Video (1992) and Funny Games (1997) earned Michael Haneke an erroneous reputation as a provocateur aiming primarily to shock. But his desire that audiences engage on an intellectual level has come, in time, to be better understood... Even the more linear stories of The Piano Teacher (2001) and Caché (2005) refuse the comforts of conventional narrative closure or psychological motivation. The audience is left asking questions that illuminate moral issues and social, political, and historical contexts. This could be dry or uninvolving, but Haneke is skilled at constructing suspenseful narratives and working with actors. He is one of modern Europe's most important filmmakers." - Geoff Andrew, 501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

 
 
Top 250 Directors 
21st Century Top 50
100 Essential Directors (Pop Matters)
Ranked 22nd on The Guardian's 2004 List of the World's 40 Best Directors
Ranked 7th on Film Comment's list of the 25 Best Directors of the Decade (2000-2009)
501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers
 
See Also
Catherine Breillat
Robert Bresson
Claude Chabrol
Carl Dreyer
Jean-Luc Godard
Abbas Kiarostami
Nagisa Oshima
François Ozon
 
Michael Haneke's Favourites
Au hasard Balthazar (1966) Robert Bresson, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) Jean-Marie Straub, The Exterminating Angel (1962) Luis Buñuel, Germany, Year Zero (1947) Roberto Rossellini, The Gold Rush (1925) Charles Chaplin, Lancelot du Lac (1974) Robert Bresson, The Mirror (1976) Andrei Tarkovsky, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) Pier Paolo Pasolini, Stalker (1979) Andrei Tarkovsky, A Woman Under the Influence (1974) John Cassavetes. Source: Profil (2004)
 
 
 
         
         

 

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