Along with Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Herzog is one of the leading lights and most eccentric figure in the New German Cinema movement emanating
from the late sixties and early seventies. Germany at this time was creating a new identity in all the arts and cinema, as well as music, was unfolding with
real vision, power and direction. His first full film, which I have never actually seen, was called "Even Dwarves Started Small", is apparently very
much like the Tod Browning film Freaks from 1932, and is about the midgets and dwarves taking over the asylum.
The first film I ever saw by Herzog was "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" (1972) which I went to see because I like the band Popol Vuh (who do the soundtrack). It is a powerful, hypnotic tale of a deluded conquistador who leads a group of men away from Pizarro's 1560 South American expedition in search of seven cities of gold. This dreamlike film was shot on location in remote Amazon jungles and Klaus Kinski is perfect as the mad Aguirre. It is in Aguirre that Herzog's link between man and nature is best drawn. Here is a character who is not of the same mold as other menone who challenges the gods above by saying, "The Earth on which I tread hears me and trembles." The gaunt, intense Kinski is remarkable in the role, creating a fearsome character as driven as any character I have ever seen appear on film. Anyone who has ever watched this will know what I mean.
Next I saw "Every Man for Himself and God Against All". Also known as The Mystery of Kasper Hauser. The story of Kaspar Hauser, who appeared in a German town in the 1820s, is a factually based variant of the lost-or-abandoned-child myth. Hauser was an enigma who turned up lost and incoherent; he was educated in human behaviour by the village folk and then was cut down by a mystery assailant.
The film is again visually stunning and the actor S. Bruno is noteworthy in the starring role.
Then there is "Heart of Glass" where a towns glassblower has died without revealing the secret formula of his craft, and this has a profound, disturbing effect on his fellow townspeople. A bit confusing but full of stark, graphic, beautiful images. This was based on some old Bavarian legend and Herzog apparently put his cast into a hypnotic trance each day, to attempt to achieve an effect of collective hysteria. Again, filled with beautiful music by Popol Vuh.
Herzog also faithfully re-filmed "Nosferatu the Vampyre" with Kinski again taking the leading role. This is a very beautiful but also quite funny. Again Popol Vuh's Florian Fricke provides the aural stuff.
In 1982 Herzog released his most (im) famous movie, Fitzcarraldo. A vivid, fascinating portrait of a man obsessed who's determined to capture a shipping route on the Amazon, even though it means hauling a boat over a mountaintop, through hostile tribal territory. Then he's going to bring in grand opera! An astonishing and captivating movie although not to everyone's taste. The lengths to which Herzog went to make this movie were extraordinary. He really did take that full sized boat over the mountain.
Here is a review of this film by Ebert; which sums it all up quite well.
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Fitzcarraldo
US (1982): Roger Ebert Review: 4.0 stars out of 4
157 min, Rated PG, Color,
Werner Herzog's FITZCARRALDO is a movie in the great tradition of grandiose cinematic visions. Like Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW or Kubrick's 2001, it is a quest film in which the hero's quest is scarcely more mad than the filmmaker's. Movies like this exist on a plane apart from ordinary films. There is a sense in which FITZCARRALDO is not altogether successfulit is too long, we could say, or too meanderingbut it is still a film that I would not have missed for the world. The movie is the story of a dreamer named Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, whose name has been simplified to "Fitzcarraldo" by the Indians and Spanish who inhabit his godforsaken corner of South America. He loves opera. He spends his days making a little money from an ice factory and his nights dreaming up new schemes. One of them, a plan to build a railroad across the continent, has already failed. Now he is ready with another: He seriously intends to build an opera house in the rain jungle, twelve hundred miles upstream from the civilized coast, and to bring Enrico Caruso there to sing an opera.
If his plan is mad, his method for carrying it out is madness of another dimension. Looking at the map, he becomes obsessed with the fact that a nearby river system offers access to hundreds of thousands of square miles of potential trading customersif only a modern steamship could be introduced into that system. There is a point, he notices, where the other river is separated only by a thin finger of land from a river that already is navigated by boats. His inspiration: Drag a steamship across land to the other river, float it, set up a thriving trade, and use the profits to build the opera houseand then bring in Caruso! This scheme is so unlikely that perhaps we should not be surprised that Herzog's story is based on the case of a real Irish entrepreneur who tried to do exactly that.
The historical Irishman was at least wise enough to disassemble his boat before carting it across land. In Herzog's movie, however, Fitzcarraldo determines to drag the boat up one hill and down the other side in one piece. He enlists engineers to devise a system of blocks-and-pulleys that will do the trick, and he hires the local Indians to work the levers with their own muscle power. And it is here that we arrive at the thing about FITZCARRALDO that transcends all understanding: Werner Herzog determined to literally drag a real steamship up a real hill, using real tackle and hiring the local Indians! To produce the movie, he decided to do personally what even the original Fitzgerald never attempted.
Herzog finally settled on the right actor to play Fitzcarraldo, author of this plan: Klaus Kinski, the shock-haired German who starred in Herzog's AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and NOSFERATU, is back again to mastermind the effort. Kinski is perfectly cast. Herzog's original choice for the role was Jason Robards, who is also gifted at conveying a consuming passion, but Kinski, wild-eyed and ferocious, consumes the screen. There are other characters important to the story, especially Claudia Cardinale as the madam who loves Fitzcarraldo and helps finance his attempt, but without Kinski at the core it's doubtful this story would work.
The story of Herzog's own production is itself well-known, and has been told in Les Blank's BURDEN OF DREAMS, a brilliant documentary about the filming. It's possible that every moment of FITZCARRALDO is colored by our knowledge that Herzog was "really" doing the things we see Fitzcarraldo do. (The movie uses no special effects, no models, no opticals, no miniatures.) Perhaps we're even tempted to give the movie extra points because of Herzog's ordeal in the jungle. But FITZCARRALDO is not all sweat and madness. It contains great poetic images of the sort Herzog is famous for: An old phonograph playing a Caruso record on the deck of a boat spinning out of control into a rapids; Fitzcarraldo frantically oaring a little rowboat down a jungle river to be in time to hear an opera; and of course the immensely impressive sight of that actual steamship, resting halfway up a hillside.
--------------------------------
Apparently during the filming of this amazing movie both Herzog and Kinski had contracts out to kill the other. They hated each other with a vengeance.
Altres
The first film I ever saw by Herzog was "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" (1972) which I went to see because I like the band Popol Vuh (who do the soundtrack). It is a powerful, hypnotic tale of a deluded conquistador who leads a group of men away from Pizarro's 1560 South American expedition in search of seven cities of gold. This dreamlike film was shot on location in remote Amazon jungles and Klaus Kinski is perfect as the mad Aguirre. It is in Aguirre that Herzog's link between man and nature is best drawn. Here is a character who is not of the same mold as other menone who challenges the gods above by saying, "The Earth on which I tread hears me and trembles." The gaunt, intense Kinski is remarkable in the role, creating a fearsome character as driven as any character I have ever seen appear on film. Anyone who has ever watched this will know what I mean.
Next I saw "Every Man for Himself and God Against All". Also known as The Mystery of Kasper Hauser. The story of Kaspar Hauser, who appeared in a German town in the 1820s, is a factually based variant of the lost-or-abandoned-child myth. Hauser was an enigma who turned up lost and incoherent; he was educated in human behaviour by the village folk and then was cut down by a mystery assailant.
The film is again visually stunning and the actor S. Bruno is noteworthy in the starring role.
Then there is "Heart of Glass" where a towns glassblower has died without revealing the secret formula of his craft, and this has a profound, disturbing effect on his fellow townspeople. A bit confusing but full of stark, graphic, beautiful images. This was based on some old Bavarian legend and Herzog apparently put his cast into a hypnotic trance each day, to attempt to achieve an effect of collective hysteria. Again, filled with beautiful music by Popol Vuh.
Herzog also faithfully re-filmed "Nosferatu the Vampyre" with Kinski again taking the leading role. This is a very beautiful but also quite funny. Again Popol Vuh's Florian Fricke provides the aural stuff.
In 1982 Herzog released his most (im) famous movie, Fitzcarraldo. A vivid, fascinating portrait of a man obsessed who's determined to capture a shipping route on the Amazon, even though it means hauling a boat over a mountaintop, through hostile tribal territory. Then he's going to bring in grand opera! An astonishing and captivating movie although not to everyone's taste. The lengths to which Herzog went to make this movie were extraordinary. He really did take that full sized boat over the mountain.
Here is a review of this film by Ebert; which sums it all up quite well.
------------------------------------------------------------
Fitzcarraldo
US (1982): Roger Ebert Review: 4.0 stars out of 4
157 min, Rated PG, Color,
Werner Herzog's FITZCARRALDO is a movie in the great tradition of grandiose cinematic visions. Like Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW or Kubrick's 2001, it is a quest film in which the hero's quest is scarcely more mad than the filmmaker's. Movies like this exist on a plane apart from ordinary films. There is a sense in which FITZCARRALDO is not altogether successfulit is too long, we could say, or too meanderingbut it is still a film that I would not have missed for the world. The movie is the story of a dreamer named Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, whose name has been simplified to "Fitzcarraldo" by the Indians and Spanish who inhabit his godforsaken corner of South America. He loves opera. He spends his days making a little money from an ice factory and his nights dreaming up new schemes. One of them, a plan to build a railroad across the continent, has already failed. Now he is ready with another: He seriously intends to build an opera house in the rain jungle, twelve hundred miles upstream from the civilized coast, and to bring Enrico Caruso there to sing an opera.
If his plan is mad, his method for carrying it out is madness of another dimension. Looking at the map, he becomes obsessed with the fact that a nearby river system offers access to hundreds of thousands of square miles of potential trading customersif only a modern steamship could be introduced into that system. There is a point, he notices, where the other river is separated only by a thin finger of land from a river that already is navigated by boats. His inspiration: Drag a steamship across land to the other river, float it, set up a thriving trade, and use the profits to build the opera houseand then bring in Caruso! This scheme is so unlikely that perhaps we should not be surprised that Herzog's story is based on the case of a real Irish entrepreneur who tried to do exactly that.
The historical Irishman was at least wise enough to disassemble his boat before carting it across land. In Herzog's movie, however, Fitzcarraldo determines to drag the boat up one hill and down the other side in one piece. He enlists engineers to devise a system of blocks-and-pulleys that will do the trick, and he hires the local Indians to work the levers with their own muscle power. And it is here that we arrive at the thing about FITZCARRALDO that transcends all understanding: Werner Herzog determined to literally drag a real steamship up a real hill, using real tackle and hiring the local Indians! To produce the movie, he decided to do personally what even the original Fitzgerald never attempted.
Herzog finally settled on the right actor to play Fitzcarraldo, author of this plan: Klaus Kinski, the shock-haired German who starred in Herzog's AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and NOSFERATU, is back again to mastermind the effort. Kinski is perfectly cast. Herzog's original choice for the role was Jason Robards, who is also gifted at conveying a consuming passion, but Kinski, wild-eyed and ferocious, consumes the screen. There are other characters important to the story, especially Claudia Cardinale as the madam who loves Fitzcarraldo and helps finance his attempt, but without Kinski at the core it's doubtful this story would work.
The story of Herzog's own production is itself well-known, and has been told in Les Blank's BURDEN OF DREAMS, a brilliant documentary about the filming. It's possible that every moment of FITZCARRALDO is colored by our knowledge that Herzog was "really" doing the things we see Fitzcarraldo do. (The movie uses no special effects, no models, no opticals, no miniatures.) Perhaps we're even tempted to give the movie extra points because of Herzog's ordeal in the jungle. But FITZCARRALDO is not all sweat and madness. It contains great poetic images of the sort Herzog is famous for: An old phonograph playing a Caruso record on the deck of a boat spinning out of control into a rapids; Fitzcarraldo frantically oaring a little rowboat down a jungle river to be in time to hear an opera; and of course the immensely impressive sight of that actual steamship, resting halfway up a hillside.
--------------------------------
Apparently during the filming of this amazing movie both Herzog and Kinski had contracts out to kill the other. They hated each other with a vengeance.
Altres
