Happy 78th Birthday, Werner Herzog! Born today in 1942 as Werner Herzog Stipetić, this iconic German poet, opera director, author, actor, screenwriter and film director is a figure of the New German Cinema.
When Herzog was two weeks old, his mother took refuge in the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang (in the Chiemgau Alps), after the house next to theirs was destroyed during an allied bombing raid in World War II.
In Sachrang, Herzog grew up without running water, a flushing toilet, or a telephone. He never saw films, and did not even know of the existence of cinema until a traveling projectionist came by the one-room schoolhouse in Sachrang.
When Herzog was twelve, he and his family moved back to Munich. His father had abandoned the family early in his youth.
Herzog later adopted his father's surname Herzog (German for "duke"), which he thought sounded more impressive for a filmmaker.
The same year, Herzog was told to sing in front of his class at school, and he adamantly refused, and was almost expelled.
Until he was age eighteen, Herzog listened to no music, sang no songs, and studied no instruments. He later said that he would easily give ten years from his life to be able to play the cello.
At an early age, Herzog experienced a dramatic phase in which he converted to Catholicism, which only lasted a few years. He then started to embark on long journeys, some of them on foot.
Around this time, he knew he would be a filmmaker, and learned the basics from a few pages in an encyclopedia, which provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a filmmaker—that, and the 35 mm camera he stole from the Munich Film School.
Herzog later won a scholarship to Duquesne University and lasted only a few days, but lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
During his last years of high school, no production company was willing to take on his projects, so Herzog worked night shifts as a welder in a steel factory to earn the funds for his first featurettes.
After graduating from high school, he was intrigued by the Congo after its independence, but only reached the south of the Sudan where he fell seriously ill.
While already making films, Herzog had a brief stint at Munich University, where he studied history and literature.
He later earned money by participating in preproduction of a documentary for NASA with KQED. Summoned to the immigration office because of a violation of his visa status, he chose to flee to Mexico.
In 1971, Herzog was on location scouting for his third feature film in Peru he narrowly avoided taking LANSA Flight 508. However, his reservation was cancelled due to a last-minute change in itinerary.
The plane was later struck by lightning and disintegrated, but one survivor, German Peruvian mammalogist Juliane Koepcke, lived after a free fall.
The following year, Herzog wrote, produced and directed the first film of which he is best known.
This was the epic 1972 West German historical drama film 'Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes' ('Aguirre, the Wrath of God', known in the United Kingdom as 'Aguirre, Wrath of God').
Set in 1560, Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), a ruthless Spanish conquistador, vies for power while part of an expedition in Peru to find El Dorado, the mythical seven cities of gold.
Accompanied by his daughter, Flores (Cecilia Rivera), Aguirre faces off against his superior, Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra), and grows increasingly volatile after seizing control of the group.
As Aguirre presses deeper into the Amazonian jungle, he descends further into madness.
Upon release, 'Aguirre' opened to widespread critical acclaim, and quickly developed a large international cult film following.
With a soundtrack composed and performed by West German kosmische band Popol Vuh, the film was given an extensive arthouse theatrical release in the United States in 1977, and remains one of Herzog's best-known films.
Two years later, Herzog wrote, produced and directed the second film of which he is best known. This was the 1977 West German drama/comedy-drama film 'Stroszek'.
The film follows Bruno Stroszek (Bruno S.), a hapless busker in Berlin. He later falls for a prostitute named Eva (Eva Mattes), who's in trouble with local thugs.
With nothing to lose, the new couple decide to emigrate to the United States with their neighbor Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz), whose American nephew lives in rural Wisconsin.
However, after a customs agent confiscates his cherished pet bird, Beo, Stroszek begins a downward spiral into culture shock and surreality as he experiences the dark underbelly of the American dream.
The visual style and narrative elements of 'Aguirre' had a strong influence on Francis Ford Coppola's epic 1979 American war/drama film 'Apocalypse Now'.
Later that same year, after the release of Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now', Herzog made the third film of which he is best known for writing, co-producing and directing.
This was the 1979 West German/French horror film 'Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht' ('Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night').
Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is sent away to Count Dracula's castle to sell him a house in Virna, where he lives. However, Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) is a vampire, an undead ghoul living off of men's blood.
Inspired by a photograph of Lucy Harker (Isabelle Adjani), Jonathan's wife, Dracula moves to Virna, bringing with him death and plague...
An unusually contemplative version of Dracula, in which the vampire bears the cross of not being able to get old and die.
Upon release, 'Nosferatu' was very well received by critics and enjoyed a comfortable degree of commercial success.
The film also marks the second of five collaborations between director Herzog and actor Kinski.
Popol Vuh again returned to score the eerie soundtrack for Herzog's film, of which had been released fifty-seven years after the original silent classic.
'Phantom of the Night' was based off of German film director F. W. Murnau's 1922 German Expressionist silent black and white fantasy/mystery horror film 'Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens' ('Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror').
Herzog, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder ('The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant', 'Ali: Fear Eats the Soul', 'Fox and His Friends, 'The Marriage of Maria Braun') and Volker Schlndorff ('The Tin Drum'), led the beginning of the West German cinema movement.
This movement consisted of documentarians who filmed on low budgets and were influenced by the French New Wave of cinema.
Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if American documentary filmmaker Errol Morris ('The Thin Blue Line', 'Fast, Cheap & Out of Control') completed the film project on pet cemeteries that he had been working on.
This was in order to challenge and motivate Morris, whom Herzog perceived as incapable of following up on the projects of which he conceived.
In 1978, when Morris' American documentary/independent film 'Gates of Heaven' premiered, Herzog cooked and publicly ate his shoe.
The event was later incorporated into American documentary filmmaker Les Blank's twenty-two-minute 1980 American short/historical documentary film 'Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe'.
At the event, Herzog suggested that he hoped the act would serve to encourage anyone having difficulty bringing a project to fruition.
In the early 1980s, Blank directed the 1982 American historical documentary film 'Burden of Dreams'.
Filmed on location in the jungles of Peru, the film follows Herzog as he begins work on the most difficult film of his career.
This was the fourth film of which Herzog is best known for writing, co-producing and directing, being the epic 1982 West German/Peruvian drama/adventure film 'Fitzcarraldo'.
It follows opera-loving European Brian Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski), who lives in a small Peruvian city.
Better known as Fitzcarraldo, the foreigner is is a great admirer of Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso, blasting him on a Victrola while sailing down the Amazonian river
Obsessed with building an opera house in his town and decides that to make his dream a reality he needs to make a killing in the rubber business.
In order to become a successful rubber baron, Fitzcarraldo hatches an elaborate plan that calls for a particularly impressive, albeit quixotic feat -- bringing a massive steamboat over a mountain with the help of a band of natives.
The film is derived from the historic events of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald and his real-life feat of transporting a disassembled steamboat over the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald.
In the 1890s, Fitzcarrald arranged for the transport of a steamship across an isthmus from one river into another, but it weighed only thirty tons (rather than over three hundred), and was instead carried over in pieces to be reassembled at its destination.
Aside from the score by regular collaborators Popol Vuh, along with excerpts from performances by Caruso, the soundtrack also includes Verdi, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Bellini, and Strauss.
However, Herzog soon ran into serious setbacks, from casting problems to his own stubborn refusal to use special effects.
After having to reshoot much of the film because the lead actor was recast, his crew must then haul an old-fashioned steamboat over a mountain using manpower alone.
However, with a massive undertaking such as 'Fitzcarraldo', Herzog had a troubled production.
He forced his crew to manually haul the three hundred and twenty-ton steamship up a steep hill, eventually leading to three injuries and one death.
The film’s original star, American stage, film, and television actor Jason Robards, got sick halfway through filming.
Due to this, Herzog hired Kinski, with whom he had previously clashed violently during production of 'Aguirre'.
Their second partnership fared no better, and an extra even offered to kill Kinski. Herzog reluctantly declined.
Later that same year, 'Fitzcarraldo' won Best Director (Werner Herzog) at the 35th Cannes Film Festival in May 1982. Herzog was also nominated for the Palme d'Or, but did not win.
One year later, 'Fitzcarraldo' was a nominee for Best Foreign Film (West Germany) at the 40th Golden Globe Awards in late January 1983.
Two months later, it was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 36th British Academy Film Awards in late March.
During that same month,, 'Burden of Dreams' won a BAFTA Award for Best Documentary at the same event.
The following month, 'Fitzcarraldo' was selected as the West German entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 55th Academy Awards. However, it did not make the shortlist of nominees. This occurred in mid-April 1983.
Ebert praised the film, giving it four stars out of four, stating: "Les Blank's "Burden of Dreams" is one of the most remarkable documentaries ever made about the making of a movie."
Several critics have declared 'Aguirre, the Wrath of God' a masterpiece, and it has appeared on Time magazine's list of "All Time 100 Best Films".
In 2004, on Roger Eberts final list of his Top 10 Favorite Films, 'Aguirre, Wrath of God' ranked in at #2.
Ebert wrote: "The film is not driven by dialogue, anyway, or even by the characters, except for Aguirre, whose personality is created as much by Kinski’s face and body as by words.
What Herzog sees in the story, I think, is what he finds in many of his films: Men haunted by a vision of great achievement, who commit the sin of pride by daring to reach for it, and are crushed by an implacable universe."
In 2009, Herzog was named one of the world's 100 Most Influential people by Time magazine.
One year later, Herzog wrote, directed and narrated the fifth and final film of which he is best known.
This was the 2010 Canadian/American/French/German/British documentary/history film 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams'.
In this documentary, Herzog and a small crew are given a rare chance to film inside France's Chauvet Cave, where the walls are covered with the world's oldest surviving paintings.
To preserve the art, people are allowed to enter the site for only two weeks a year. Examining the 30,000-year-old drawings, Herzog discusses how the artwork represents humanity's earliest dreams with scientists and art scholars conducting research at Chauvet.
The trademarks in Herzog's films include working with German actor Klaus Kinski, animals doing unusual things, extended landscape shots, screeching cellos and violins in musical scores, and driven protagonists who often seem to be on the brink of madness.
His other trademarks include a deep, mouth voice, archive footage from various sources, frequently featuring characters or real people who attempt to change nature but are ultimately overwhelmed by it.
Among his other credit, Herzog is also known for directing 'Even Dwarfs Started Small' (1970), 'Woyzeck' (1979), 'My Best Fiend' (1999), 'Wings of Hope' (2000), 'Grizzly Man' (2005), and 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans' (2009).
The films of Herzog often feature the Urabamba River in Peru as a regular location for some of his films, ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, and people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who are in conflict with nature.
Throughout his career, Herzog has won numerous national and international awards for his poetic feature and documentary films.
Besides using professional actors—German, American and otherwise—Herzog is known for using people from the locality in which he is shooting.
Especially in his documentaries, he uses locals to benefit what he calls "ecstatic truth" (as opposed to the literal or factual truth). He uses footage of the non-actors both playing roles and being themselves.
His films have received considerable critical acclaim and achieved popularity on the art house circuit.
They have also been the subject of controversy in regard to their themes and messages, especially the circumstances surrounding their creation.
His treatment of subjects has been characterized as Wagnerian in its scope. He is proud of never using storyboards and often improvising large parts of the script.
One of the most influential filmmakers in New German Cinema and one of the most extreme personalities in film per se, larger-than-life Herzog quickly gained recognition not only for creating some of the most fantastic narratives in film, but for pushing himself and his crew to unprecedented lengths, again and again, in order to achieve the effects he demanded.
Herzog has been active from 1962–present.
#borntodirect
@wernerherzog.ds
@RogerEbert
@Criterion
@tcm
@Kanopy
@nytimes
@time
@RollingStone
@Britannica
@tubi
No comments:
Post a Comment