![]() Director: Werner Herzog Year Of Release: 1974 Plot: Based on a true story, a young man suddenly appears in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to speak or walk, and bearing a strange note. He later explains that he has been held captive in a dungeon of some sort for his entire life, and only recently released, for reasons unknown. His benefactor attempts to integrate him into society, but his past may be coming back to haunt him. |
The Move-A-Day Project is a series of articles based on a multiude of subjects inspired by a different film each day. To find out more about the project click here, or for the full list of previous articles and future movies we’ll be covering click here.
Although not many people have seen it, its worth seeking out The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser. A somewhat peculiar film, it bears the trademarks of Werner Herzogs slightly loose but incredibly intriguing style, which reaches into places few other filmmakers would now how to find, or which theyd probably wouldnt realise theyd got even if they managed to capture it. If nothing else, its based on a truly fascinating true story of a young man who in the mid 19th Century turned up in Nuremberg, barely able to walk or talk, with a pair of notes, which more or less gifted him to a soldier.
Once taught to speak properly, he claimed to have been locked in a small room all his life, with no human contact (he even said he was drugged when the straw he slept on was changed), before being released. While he became a bit of cause celebre, after a while many started to doubt his claims, and felt he may have fabricated everything, for reasons unknown. The film tends to believe his story, and indeed there are many who still think Kaspar probably was kept isolated for the first 17 years of his life, while others find the whole thing a little implausible.
Its the sort of story you can understand intriguing Herzog, who seems fascinated by people who have lived or are trying to live in ways outside the norm, often struggling to achieve the seemingly impossible. Indeed he found a guy to play the lead character who may have been 20-years older than the real Hauser and had no acting experience, but who got the role because his life was so similar to the story they were telling, and Herzog felt that was what was needed. Bruno S was a self-taught musician who spent most of his early life in various mental institutes, after being rejected by the abusive prostitute whod given birth to him.
Beyond his casting choices, Herzog is a fascinating guy, partly because while some of his movies are far better than others, theyre very rarely like anything anyone else would make, and range through fiction, documentaries, experimental works, movies that verge close to the mainstream and those that are just plain strange.
However his reputation rests almost as much on the craziness of what has happened while he made many of his films as the movies themselves. There are a few reasons his sets have often been rather mad. The first is his utter commitment to his films, which means that if you get in the way of his vision, youre in trouble. Hes said that, If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it, and he probably would.
Another reason for the craziness is that while most filmmakers plan everything down to the last detail, Herzog tends to have a looser style, waiting to discover things and tease them out on the set. Although thats a decent idea, its sometimes resulted in the production running away with itself, with Herzog looking for something, the rest of the crew unsure how to give it to him and everything getting out of hand.
Finally, hes Werner Herzog, a man who doesnt quite think like the rest of the world, and isnt afraid to threaten to kill people if things get bad. Equally, when he talks about his movies, you get the impression hes slightly living in his own little world, so that whatever audiences make of them, to him his films will always be something else.
If you dont know much about Herzog, you may wonder what Im talking about, so here are a few of the stories from the Herzog vault. And interesting, if slightly peculiar, tale happened in 2006. Joaquin Phoenix was driving along in LA when he got into an accident and his car overturned. It happened to be just outside Werner Herzogs house, so the director came out, pulled Phoenix from the wreckage and phoned an ambulance. However rather than waiting to make sure the actor was alright, he just disappeared, leaving Phoenix wondering whether hed just dreamt the entire thing.
Like I said, his brain doesnt quite work like other people. Another example of his unusual reactions to the world occurred in 2005 when Mark Kermode was conducting an outdoors filmed interview with the director, when they came under fire from an air rifle. Herzog was hit, but barely seemed to pay any attention, calmly declaring “Someone is shooting at us”, before deciding his wound was insignificant and they should just continue the interview (despite Kermode insisting he ought to go to the hospital).
But by the time these things happened he was already a legend in the ranks of nutty directors, in large part because of his love-hate relationship with the actor Klaus Kinski. It was a very strange relationship, as even before they started making movies together, Herzog already had a reputation for being temperamental, while the completely nuts Kinski was considered by many to be almost impossible to work with. Youd have thought theyd have avoided working with one another, but they didnt.
They two had known each other for quite a long time, and Herzog decided to cast him in one of his early films, 1972s Aguirre Wrath Of God. From the moment filming started, the relationship between Herzog and Kinski was thorny, and eventually got to the point where Kinski threatened to simply walk off the shoot. An incensed Kinski then told the actor that he would shoot him and then himself if that happened. Kinski said the director was actually waving a gun at the time, although Herzog has said he wasnt that said, Werner has admitted it wasnt an idle threat.
As if to compound the problems on that film, at one point it looked like after filming was complete, all the negatives had been lost, only resurfacing several weeks later when the shipping company discovered that because of a problem with their records, all the paperwork had been completed but the film canisters werent actually sent.
Despite their problems on that film, Herzog and Kinski worked together several more times, including on the legendary Fitzcarraldo in 1982. Initially Kinski wasnt supposed to be in the movie, but the original star Jason Robards got ill and was forced to leave permanently about 40% of the way through the shoot. This also meant that co-star Mick Jagger was forced to pull out because of the delays and an upcoming Rolling Stones tour he had to be ready for. Kinski stepped in for Robards, while Jaggers character was completely removed (Herzog tends to write his screenplays incredibly quickly, with the scripts then morphing and changing right through to the last day of shooting, as Kinski discovers new thing), and shooting had to start right over form the beginning.
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Fitzcarraldo is famed for art imitating life. The movie is about a man seized by a dream to build an opera house in the middle of the jungle, but first he needs to make money, and so decides to haul a 320-ton ship over a mountain so he can access places and get goods others cant reach. However rather than using movie tricks or effects to achieve this, Hezog decided he literally wanted to haul a giant boat up a hill (oddly, its based on a true story, but in reality the ship was much smaller and was dismantled and reassembled rather than being dragged).
This caused gargantuan logisitical problems, with many deciding that Herzog was completely insane to even attempt it. However hed been seized by a dream and wouldnt let it go. Nor did he care much about health and safety, as once more Herzogs drive for authenticity didnt just put people in danger by trying to get a boat up a hill, but at one point they were also asked to be on the vessel as it careered through a set of rapids. The result was that they got the footage, but three of the six men on the boat were injured, including one person sustaining two broken ribs. (Its worth noting that hes filmed all over the world in fact hes the only director to make a movie on every continent often working in countries with little or no workplace safety laws, working with small crews and with little oversight, allowing him to get away with things it would be impossible to do on a normal movie set).
Once more Kinski and Herzog fought constantly, with the director claiming in My Best Friend the documentary he made about the actor that at one point one of the native Amazonian chiefs working as an extra on the film offered to kill Kinski for him. The director declined, more so he could get the film finished than because of anything else. Indeed the shooting of Fitzcarraldo became so legendary that theres even a feature-length documentary about it, called Burden Of Dreams, which is well worth a watch.
This just scratches the surface of how Werner Herzog is not like other directors. Indeed if he didnt have a touch of genius, much of what hes tried should have been an unmitigated disaster. For example, he became fascinated with hypnotism, and decided to make the 1976 film Heart Of Glass with nearly all the actor performing under hypnosis for the entire movie. The result was slightly bizarre and stylised, but it works due to the film being about a town sinking into disorder and madness. Hypnosis is something hes revisited several times, and he even taught Tim Roth to do it so the actor could hypnotise and de-hypnotise people on-screen, in the 2001 film Invincible.
If youre a long-time reader of Movie-A-Day, you may also remember me talking about a movie called Werner Herzog Eat His Shoe, where the director literally does just that. You can find more about that here.
Theres little doubt Herzog is not like other people. He is almost the stereotype of the wild artist, willing to do anything for his art. The fact is though, most people who are genuinely like that dont produce much thats worthwhile, as everythings too chaotic to genuinely create something transcendent. However Herzog has the rare ability to live on the edge with his art, and actually use that to create movies unlike other people, and which reveal things it would be difficult to uncover any other wat. I really would recommend you seek some of his films out (there are several more in the Movie-A-Day series), as theyre nearly always interesting, thought provoking and not quite like any other films.
NOTE: The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser is only available on DVD on the UK as part of the Werner Herzog box set
TIM ISAAC
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