The Film: Arguably Haneke's best to date, taking a purely fictional source (it adapts Elfriede Jelike's novel about a musical mistress whose attitude towards her students - and one in particular - takes on disturbingly erotic dimensions).

He still manages to find time for his obsessions with damaged psyches, and it earns him the Golden Palm at Cannes, with stars Benoit Magimel and Isabelle Huppert scoring Best Actor and Actress.

Haneke's View: "The choice of music was one of the most enjoyable parts of making the film," he says. "But I have too much respect for music to simply throw it in my films, which is why music rarely comes up in them. Usually music is used to hide a film's problems.

"Here music becomes a part of the film itself. Some of the pieces are specified in the novel itself - Bach's double concerto for two klaviers for instance. In the novel Erika Kohut says her two favourite composers are Schubert and Schumann, but it was up to me to choose which pieces to use."