Born in Munich, 1942, Herzog's
family quickly moved to a remote village in Austria to avoid the
bombing. Spending the first few years of his life isolated from
contemporary culture, after seeing some films at school, Herzog
realised that he had a calling to film-making. After travelling first
to England then driving in a truck convoy to Athens and continuing on
via Crete into the Sudan, he returned to Germany to shoot his first
production
Herakles (1962).
Running to only 12 minutes, it was an experiment in 35mm editing.
Although shooting some more short films and receiving an award for a
screenplay, that later became
Signs of Life
(1968), Herzog could not find any funding and so travelled on a
scholarship to study in America - but when the University course turned
out not to be what he had hoped for, he turned in the scholarship and
was looked after by an American family for several months.
While doing some film work for NASA, they discovered that his visa had
expired and he ended up homeless in New York before fleeing to Mexico
where he made some money smuggling goods across the border and working
at a bull rodeo. Eventually returning to Germany he shot his first
feature film
Signs of Life
(1968), which also marked his first work with composer and
pianist
Florian Fricke who would go on to score several of
Herzog's best films. Although receiving critical acclaim and an award,
the film proved unsucessful with audiences.
After shooting some
more short films, Herzog travelled to Africa where he shot footage for
three seperate and very different films.
The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969) is a simple documentary piece about doctors in African communities.
Fata Morgana
(1971) is a completely free-form collection of shots of mirages and
'embarrassed landscapes' filmed over the course of three months in the
Saharan desert. Unfortunately, the filming was hampered by local
politics; Herzog and his crew were repeatedly arrested by local milita
in Cameroon and were lucky to survive.
Even Dwarfs Started Small
(1970) was filmed in Lanzarote on the Canary Islands and serves as a
bizarre parody of the revolutionary atmosphere that seemed to be
sweeping Europe, especially in light of the 1968 youth uprisings. His
next production,
Land of Silence and Darkness
(1971) is a simple but powerful film about the death & blind
community, focusing on a woman named Fini. Although considered too
controversial at first, it was screened on television and proved highly
popular. This sucess of this film was followed up by Herzog's first
mainstream cinema work
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
(1972). Inspired by a paragraph in a kid's book, he wrote the
screenplay in three days. With a low budget, mostly provided by a
television station, the film has a strong documentary feel to it and is
the first of several films Herzog shot about real historical figures on
the brink of insanity, and like the later films it forgoes 'facts' in
favour of a most stylised approach.
Aguirre also marked the first time Herzog worked the notorious actor
Klaus Kinski
who played the role of almost insane men to perfection, he would go on
to star in four more of Herzog's best films as well as being the
subject of a posthumous biographical documentary. Although unsucessful
in Germany, the film proved popular in France and eventually played
around the world.
The next feature film was
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
(1974). Based on a mysterious real-life incident and with some surreal
dream sequences, Herzog became controversial for his choice of lead
actor. Bruno S. had spent most his life in institutions and was a
social outcast - but he gives a emotive and unique performance
here, that makes this film very powerful. Again, unpopular in Germany,
it proved sucessful in the rest of the world and encouraged Herzog to
shoot his most ambitious, experimental project to date.
Heart of Glass (1976) is based on German folk tales of people with forsight and supernatural abilities
. For
the filming he had almost the entire cast of the film hypnotised, which
along with a
Florian Fricke soundtrack gives the entire film a
wonderfully dream-like atmosphere. After the sucess of
Kaspar Hauser (1974), Werner Herzog cast its star, Bruno S. in the lead role of
Stroszeck
(1977) - a comparatively simple story of a German man travelling to
make
a new life in America, although as usual, it is stylised. Later that year, news came of an active volcanic
island in the Carribean that was being evacuated - one man refused to leave and chose to
stay on the island, hearing of this, Herzog immediately flew down to interview
him and film the Volcano for his
documentary
La Soufrière
(1977). Although he was becoming accepted as one of the best German
film makers of the era, Herzog believed that the contemporary German
cinema had few links to the previous generation of film-makers, those
of the 1920s and early 1930s.
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979) is a haunting tribute to the classic F.W. Murnau film and starred
Klaus Kinksi
as Count Dracula. In order to avoid having to re-apply for shooting
permission in Czechoslovakia, within 2 days of completing the shoots
for
Nosferatu, Herzog began filming
Woyzeck (1979). Based on a well known German play, the film includes probably
Klaus Kinski's best performance, and although a minor chapter in their work together, is a very interesting film.
As
the 1980s rolled around, Werner Herzog was in the USA shooting a couple
of short film documentaries with very contrasting religious themes.
Huie's Sermon (1980) concerned a New York Bishop, while
God's Angry Man
(1980) is a fascinating look at the controversial televangelist and
preacher Gene Scott. The next year Herzog began his largest and most
troublesome production to date.
Fitzcarraldo (1982)
is the story of a man who wanted to move a boat over a mountain in the
Amazonian rain forests. Shooting was severely hampered by a massive
military build-up in the area because of a border conflict with
Ecuador, and some very negative press reporting. Eventually the crew
were forced to move even further into the jungle to find the only other
location in South America suitable for making the film. As well as the
sheer complexity of actually moving a boat over a mountain, production
was affected further when the lead actor Jason Robards (
Once Upon a Time in the West
(1968)) fell ill and had to leave the shoot, while Mick Jagger, who had
been playing his assistant, had to return to perform on a Rolling
Stones tour. Fortunately
Klaus Kinski was free, and stepped in to play the lead role. The making of the film was documented by Les Blank in the documentary feature
Burden of Dreams (1982).
After the stresses of
Fitzcarraldo (1982), Herzog spent the next few years producing operas and filming some documentary style pieces.
The Ballad of the Little Soldiers (1984) told about the plight of child soldiers in Central Africa, while
The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1984) was about the climber Reinhold Messner, and
Where the Green Ants Dream
(1984) looked at the aboriginal people of Australia and the destruction
of their ancient ways of life. He finally decided to bring Kinski back
for another feature film - based on a novel,
Cobra Verde (1987) tells of a Brazilian bandit who travels to Africa to re-start the slave trade.
Klaus Kinski
was all but burnt out by this point in his life, just three years
before he died, and Herzog had real trouble shooting with him. Again
plauged by production difficulties in the African locations, the film
is the least of the Herzog/Kinski partnerships and the last time they
would work together. More short films followed, shot in Africa, before
Herzog began work on
Scream of Stone
(1991). Based around the mountain Cerro Torre in South America,
generally considered to be the hardest climb in the world, the film was
unusual in that the script was already written and so Herzog was unable
to make the changes he wanted to it. However, it remains an interesting
film with some impressive visuals.
Lessons of Darkness
(1992) was shot in Kuwait in the aftermath of the First Gulf War and
showed the work of the men trying to extinguish the oil fires - shot in
a very stylised manner it proved highly controversial, with German
critics hating the film, although it proved popular in America. He
followed this with more stylised documentary pieces -
Bells from the Deep (1993) showed an assortment of eccentric Russian characters and their religious beliefs,
Death for Five Voices (1995) told of the curious 16th Century composer Carlo Gesualdo and
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
(1997) told the story of Dieter Dengler, a German airman who flew in
the US Navy during the Vietnam war and was captured after his plane
crashed. As part of the film, Herzog actually took Dieter back into the
jungle to re-enact some of the sequences of his capture. A more
personal documentary followed -
My Best Fiend
(1999) was a look back at the checkered history between Herzog and
Kinski with some interesting behind the scenes stories and footage.
Herzog finally returned to feature films with
Invincible
(2001) - like many of his best feature films it is a fictionalised,
stylised story of a real man - in this case a Jewish strongman who
became famous in 1920s Berlin. Over the next few years, a trio of
interesting documentary features emerged, as Herzog began to become
again a globally recognised name.
The White Diamond
(2004) is, on the surface, a simple look at a fascinating project to
fly minature blimps over the rainforest to provide a unique opportunity
to see into the forest canopies - an area almost ignored by science,
however, Herzog uses some strong visuals to give the film a typically
dream-like essence. This effect is magnified in the psuedo-documentary
The Wild Blue Yonder
(2005) which uses footage from NASA missions and underwater
photography, combined with powerful music, to create a completely
unique visual experience. More attention grabbing was the documentary
Grizzly Man
(2005) which showed the eccentric nature-lover Timothy Treadwell,
mostly through his own footage, who lived with brown bears in North
America and was eventually killed by them. At the same time, Herzog was
cast as a stylised version of himself in the highly impressive, but
little known psuedo-documentary
Incident at Loch Ness
(2004) which shows his interactions with a sterotypical Hollywood
producer (the film's writer and director, and real Hollywood producer
Zak Penn) and attempts to film a documentary about the Loch Ness
Monster. With the sucess of these films came a chance to shoot another
feature film -
Rescue Dawn (2007) which retells the story of Dieter Dengler and stars Christian Bale in the lead role. It is due for cinema release soon.
Often
extremely controversial, persued by ugly rumours and derided by critics
in his home country, yet considered by many film fans to be the best
film-maker alive, Werner Herzog is certainly one of the most important
film directors of the 20th and possibly 21st centuries. His output is
incredibly varied, ranging from free-form films comprised entirely
of images of nature coupled with dreamy music, to hard hitting
documentaries and some very impressive feature films with real location
shoots that add a layer of authenticity rarely seen in
cinema. While many visionary European directors were at the whim
of their producers, Herzog took the initiative early on to produce his
own films, and thus the majority of his output are very personal films.
In summary, anyone interested in cinema should take the time to sample
some of Herzog's work - check out the reviews below to find a good
place to start.
