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March 29, 2011 (XXII:10) : (1982, 158 min)

Directed by Werner Herzog Written by Werner Herzog Produced by Werner Herzog, Willi Segler, Lucki Stipetic Cinematography by Production Design by Ulrich Bergfelder, Music Composed by Popol Vuh

Klaus Kinski... Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald - 'Fitzcarraldo' ... Molly José Lewgoy... Don Aquilino Miguel Ángel Fuentes ... Cholo Paul Hittscher... Captain (Orinoco Paul) ... Opera Manager Milton Nascimento... Blackman At Opera House

Werner Herzog (September 5, 1942, , ) Woodchuck chuck...” / “Beobachtungen zu einer neuen directed 60 films, many of them documentaries, and wrote 51 of Sprache”, 1977 Heinrich, 1977 , 1976 Strongman them. Some of his titles are 2012 “Death Row”, 2010 Caves of Ferdinand, 1975 Under the Beach's Cobbles, 1973 Part-Time Forgotten Dreams, 2009 My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, Work of a Domestic Slave, 1972 : The Wrath of God, 2009 The : Port of Call - New Orleans, 2007 1971 The Big Mess, 1970 Even Dwarfs Started Small, 1968 The Encounters at the End of the World, 2006 , 2005 Artist in the Circus Dome: Clueless, 1967 Table for Love, 1966 , 2005 , 2004 The White Yesterday Girl, 1965 Unendliche Fahrt - aber begrenzt, and Diamond, 2003 Wheel of Time, 1999 , 1998 Little 1965 Varia Vision. Dieter Needs to Fly, 1992 , 1986 Portrait Werner Herzog, 1982 Fitzcarraldo, 1979 Woyzeck, 1979 The group Popol Vuh has 12 film music credits: 2006 A propos the Vampyre, 1977 Stroszek, 1976 Heart of Glass, de America, 2005 Parallel 42, 1999 My Best Fiend, 1991 Il gioco 1972 Aguirre: The Wrath of God, 1971 Land of Silence and delle ombre, 1990 Al Gatun, 1987 , 1985 Darkness, 1971 Fata Morgana, 1970 Even Dwarfs Started Small, “Gasherbrum - Der leuchtende Berg”, 1982 Fitzcarraldo, 1979 1967 The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz, , 1976 Heart of Glass, 1974 Die große and1962 Herakles. Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner, and 1972 Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Thomas Mauch (April 4, 1937, Heidenheim/Brenz, Germany) has 95 cinematrography credits, many of them documentaries. ... Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald - 'Fitzcarraldo' Some of his films are 2008 Wir waren so frei, 2008 Mozart in (October 18, 1926, Zoppot, [now Sopot, China, 2006 Heimat-Fragmente: Die Frauen, 2006 Warchild, Pomorskie, ] – November 23, 1991, Lagunitas, California) 2005 Die Hitlerkantate, 2000 Half of Heaven, 2000 The King's has 135 acting credits, among them 1989 Kinski Paganini, 1988 Daughters, 1998 Sweety Barrett, 1998 “Walli, die Eisfrau”, 1995 in Venice, 1988 Grandi cacciatore, 1987 Cobra Verde, Orson Welles: The One-Man Band, 1995 I.D., 1995 1986 Revenge of the Stolen Stars, 1985 Kommando Leopard, Transatlantis, 1994 Auf Wiedersehen Amerika, 1990 “Murder 1985 Creature, 1984 The Little Drummer Girl, 1984 Code East - Murder West”, 1989 Waller's Last Trip, 1987 Witness in Name: Wild Geese, 1984 “Faerie Tale Theatre”, 1984 The Secret the War Zone, 1986 Ain't Nothin' Without You, 1983 The Power Diary of Sigmund Freud, 1982 The Soldier, 1982 Fitzcarraldo, of Emotion, 1983 “Dingo”, 1983 Kiez, 1983 Heinrich 1982 Love & Money, 1981 Buddy Buddy, 1981 Venom, 1981 Penthesilea von Kleist, 1982 Fitzcarraldo, 1981 Desperado City, Fruits of Passion, 1980 Schizoid, 1980 Haine, 1979 Woyzeck, 1980 Palermo oder Wolfsburg, 1978 “How much Wood would a 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre, 1978 The Song of Roland, 1977 Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—2

The French Woman, 1976 Golden Night, 1976 Jack the Ripper, grande parada, 1966 Ring Around the World, 1957 S.O.S. 1975 A Genius, Two Friends, and an Idiot, 1975 Return of Noronha, 1953 Três Recrutas, and 1952 Três Vagabundos. Shanghai Joe, 1974 Lover of the Monster, 1974 The Hand That Feeds the Dead, 1973 Shanghai Joe, 1973 Death Smiles on a PETER BERLING... Opera Manager (March 20, 1934, Meseritz- Murderer, 1972 Aguirre: The Wrath of God, 1971 Black Killer, Obrawalde, Germany [now Obrzyce, Poland]) appeared in 68 1971 Death's Dealer, 1971 Shoot the Living and Pray for the films and television programs, including 2002 Gangs of New Dead, 1971 Coffin Full of Dollars, 1971 Giù la testa... hombre, York, 2002 Angel of Death, 1994 Satantango, 1993 Texas - Doc 1970 Churchill's Leopards, 1970 Count Dracula, 1969 Sartana Snyder hält die Welt in Atem, 1993 “Geschichten aus der Heimat the Gravedigger, 1969 Venus in Furs, 1969 They Were Called – Blattschuß”, 1991 Voyager, 1990 Visioni private, 1988 The Graveyard, 1968 The Bastard, 1968 If You Meet Sartana Pray Last Temptation of Christ, 1987 Cobra Verde, 1986 The Name of for Your Death, 1967 Grand Slam, 1966 A Bullet for the the Rose, 1982 Fitzcarraldo, 1982 Veronika Voss, 1982 An Ideal General, 1966 Das Geheimnis der gelben Mönche, 1966 Killer's Adventure, 1979 The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1976 Mr. Carnival, 1966 Bang! Bang! You're Dead!, 1965 Doctor Scarface, 1976 Black and White in Color, 1975 Sergeant Klems, Zhivago, 1965 , 1964 Die Gruft mit dem 1975 Bang, and the Angels Sing, 1974 Julia, 1973 Dirty Rätselschloß, 1964 Mark of the Tortoise, 1963 Dr. Mabuse vs. Weekend, 1972 Aguirre: The Wrath of God, 1972 The Italian Scotland Yard, 1963 The Black Cobra, 1962 Der rote Raush, Connection, 1969 Love is Colder Than Death, 1969 Detektive, 1962 The Counterfeit Traitor, 1961 Dead Eyes of London, 1958 1968 Uxmal, 1966 Der Brief, and1957 Immer wenn der Tag A Time to Love and a Time to Die, 1955 Children, Mother, and beginnt. the General, 1955 Ludwig II: Glanz und Ende eines Königs, and 1948 Morituri

CLAUDIA CARDINALE... Molly (April 15, 1938, Tunis, French Protectorate Tunisia [now Tunisia]) has appeared in 196 films, among them 2011 Signora Enrica, 2010 A View of Love, 2009 The String, 2005 The Demon Stirs, 1999 Brigands, 1997 Sous les pieds des femmes, 1994 Elles ne pensent qu'à ça..., 1993 Son of the Pink Panther, 1992 Mother, 1991 Act of Sorrow, 1989 La révolution française, 1987 A Man in Love, 1985 L'été prochain, 1985 Woman of Wonders, 1984 Henry IV, 1983 Le ruffian, 1982 Fitzcarraldo, 1981 Corleone, 1981 The Salamander, 1978 Little Girl in Blue Velvet, 1977 “Jesus of Nazareth”, 1975 Blonde in Black Leather, 1973 Days of Fury, 1969 The Red Tent, 1969 A Fine Pair, 1968 Once Upon a Time in the West, 1967 Don't Make Waves, 1967 A Rose for Everyone, 1966 The Professionals, David Church, “Werner Herzog,” Senses of Cinema 41 1966 Lost Command, 1964 The Magnificent Cuckold, 1964 Time of Indifference, 1963 The Pink Panther, 1963 The Leopard, 1963 With a singular vision continually blurring the fine line between 8½, 1961 Girl with a Suitcase, 1960 Rocco and His Brothers, reality and fiction, Werner Herzog has become one of cinema’s 1960 The Magistrate, 1960 The Battle of Austerlitz, 1958 Tre most controversial and enigmatic filmmakers. A strong authorial straniere a Roma, 1958 Big Deal on Madonna Street, and 1958 presence pervades each of his films, whether fictional features or Goha documentaries. For Herzog, there is no distinction between the two styles – they are all just “films” – because real life and JOSÉ LEWGOY… Don Aquilino (November 16, 1920, fiction feed off each other for mutual poetic inspiration. His Veranópolis, Rio Grande do Sul, – February 10, 2003, Rio worldview often seems bleak and anti-humanistic, featuring de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) appeared in 134 films and quixotic outsiders who reject or are rejected by society, only to television programs, some of which were 2003 Apolônio Brasil, be crushed by the weight of their own ambitions. Civilisation is Campeão da Alegria, 2002 “Esperança”, 1999 The Magic Hour, always teetering at the edge of self-destruction, “like a thin layer 1999 “Força de Um Desejo”, 1992-1998 “Você Decide”, 1998 of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness” (1), with faith Policarpo Quaresma, Herói do Brasil, 1996 The Jew, 1992 and superstition minding the tattered border. An air of Perfume de Gardênia, 1992 “Perigosas Peruas”, 1990 Stelinha, Romanticism finds human kind dwarfed by the terrifying might 1989 Two Edged Knife, 1988 Moon Over Parador, 1987 Cobra and majesty of nature, while strange landscapes exist as Verde, 1985 Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1982 Fitzcarraldo, 1982 reflections of inner mental states. Although keenly aware of his Tabu, 1978 The Mucker, 1976 O Flagrante, 1976 Padre Cícero, nation’s violent past, Herzog’s films generally eschew specific 1976 O Homem de Papel, 1975 As Secretárias... Que Fazem de historical and political considerations in the face of a universe Tudo, 1974 “O Professor Vai Embora”, 1973 Hung , 1973 filled with murder, destruction and the demise of the individual. “Cavalo de Aço”, 1972 Independência ou Morte, 1971 Pra These themes gradually emerge throughout a body of work at Quem Fica, Tchau, 1971 Lua-de-Mel e Amendoim, 1970 Mortal once stunning and perplexing. As with the subject matter in his Sin, 1969 The Girl Watchers, 1968 Roberto Carlos em Ritmo de “documentaries”, it is often difficult to separate the “real” Aventura, 1968 Roberto Carlos e o Diamante Cor-de-Rosa, 1968 Herzog from the myriad fictions that have sprung up around him, A Vida Provisória, 1967 A Rose for Everyone, 1967 Jerry - a either as myths perpetuated in the media or as subtle fabrications maintained by Herzog himself (2). Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—3

Born in 1942, Herzog grew up amid post-World War II “putting the instruments of war into the hands of individuals” (7), destruction in the small Bavarian village of Sachrang. He saw his an idea that would resurface years later in Herzog’s controversial first movies at age 11 and quickly discovered film technique by documentary Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten (Ballad of the Little taking heed of continuity errors and generic conventions in cheap Soldier, 1984). During the making of Signs of Life, Herzog also B-movies (3). At age 14, he began a short period of intense shot the experimental short Letzte Worte (Last Words, 1968), Catholic devotion, around the same time that he discovered the about a hermit who is brought back to civilisation, where he virtues of travelling on foot and became determined to make refuses to speak; meanwhile, other members of society films (4). As a teenager, Herzog learned about filmmaking from obsessively repeat themselves to the point of nonsense. This film an encyclopaedia entry on the subject, but because of his youth would mark the start of Herzog’s investigation into human and lack of formal training, he was unable to find producers for language, and his continued steps toward increasing narrative his early screenplays. Consequently, he founded Werner Herzog stylisation. It was followed by Massnahmen Gegen Fanatiker Filmproduktion and began producing his own films (5). He has (Precautions Against Fanatics, 1969), a humorous short about written, produced, directed and paranoid people at a Munich often narrated virtually all of racetrack trying to prevent his own films since then, “fanatics” from assaulting the becoming an auteur in the horses. proper sense. A surge of interest in Directed at age 19, his was first short film was Herakles emerging during the late-1960s (1962), an editing experiment (especially after the 1968 juxtaposing footage of Oberhausen Film Festival) and bodybuilders with the famous Herzog became seen as one of racing accident at Le Mans. its key filmmakers, along with Herzog’s conception of the others like Fassbinder, strongman “encompasses Schlöndorff and Wim Wenders intellectual strength, – all members of the first independence of mind, important generation of German confidence, self-reliance, and filmmakers to emerge in the maybe even a kind of post-war era. However, Herzog innocence” (6), making it a never saw New German central trait of his protagonists and of himself as a filmmaker; he Cinema as a cohesive movement, nor did he consider himself a has repeatedly argued that filmmaking is much more of an part of it. Furthermore, he disliked many German films of the athletic endeavour than an aesthetic one. However, the strange time period for being “impossibly provincial” and explicitly juxtaposition of footage in Herakles also suggests that even the ideological, whereas he made many of his own films outside strongman striving for some superhuman quality can still be cut Germany, aiming for an international audience. His films have down by cruel acts of chance – as evidenced in Invincible (2001) rarely been successful within Germany itself, for he claims that and many other Herzog films with doomed protagonists. His next Germans mistrust their own culture (8). Nevertheless, he seems short was a documentary called Spiel im Sand (Game in the to consider New German Cinema’s project of reconstituting a Sand, 1964), about four children and a rooster in a cardboard domestic national identity to be less important than gaining box, but he has never publicly shown the film. His next fictional “legitimacy as a civilized nation” abroad, a continuing struggle short, Die beispiellose Verteidigung der Festung Deutschkreuz even today (9). Part of seeking this legitimacy meant reaching (The Unprecedented Defense of the Fortress Deutschkreuz, back to the period of pre-Nazi German cinema, and film historian 1966), told the absurd story of four men guarding a derelict Lotte Eisner (author of influential studies like The Haunted Austrian castle from imaginary attackers as they gradually lose Screen) provided the link between the two eras. Eisner was an their sanity. early champion of Herzog’s work and New German Cinema in After travelling Europe and North America for several general. She provided a voiceover for Fata Morgana (1970) and years, Herzog returned to Munich in 1968, where he met Volker would be a great inspiration to Herzog in later years. Herzog’s Schlöndorff and , two other young 1979 remake of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) would solidify directors who would emerge as guiding lights of the New his aim of gaining legitimacy by bridging the history of German German Cinema. Set on Crete during the Nazi occupation of cinema (10). Greece, his first fictional feature, Lebenszeichen (Signs of Life, A trio of films emerged from a near-fatal journey to 1968), follows the same theme as The Unprecedented Defense, Africa in 1969. Die fliegenden Ärzte von Ostafrika (The Flying telling the story of a young German soldier named Stroszek who Doctors of East Africa, 1969), a documentary about doctors goes mad while defending a useless ammunition dump from travelling Africa to prevent the eye disease trachoma, was (in nonexistent enemies. Suddenly becoming violently active, Herzog’s estimation) more of a practical “report” than a proper Stroszek frightens away the few other soldiers and begins film, much as Behinderte Zukunft (, 1971) shooting fireworks at the nearby town, but only succeeds in would be several years later (11). The second film, Fata killing a donkey before being captured and carted away. Morgana, is one of Herzog’s boldest and most experimental Emphasising existential angst over historical accuracy and “documentaries”. Surreal images of mirages, landscapes and political commentary, the film shows the utter absurdity of desert dwellers are arranged into three parts – The Creation, Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—4

Paradise and The Golden Age – accompanied by narration from for disability access in Germany, using recent disability rights Popol Vuh, the Mayan book of creation myths and history. legislation in the for comparison. During its Though it was released in some places as a psychedelic picture, filming, Herzog met Fini Straubinger, a woman whose deafness the film’s original concept was to be a sort of documentary and blindness allows her to only communicate via a tactile pieced together from footage shot by extraterrestrials that have language. The resulting documentary, Land des Schweigens und landed on a strange planet and discover people waiting for an der Dunkelheit (Land of Silence and Darkness, 1971), expands impending collision with the sun; the film would allow humans several themes that run throughout Herzog’s oeuvre in films like to see how aliens might perceive our planet. Although this Last Words, Kaspar Hauser and Lessons of Darkness. Like many concept was scrapped during filming, the idea for a sort of of his other characters, he portrays Fini and the other deaf-mute science-fiction documentary would persist in Lektionen in people as outsiders isolated from society, suffering from an Finsternis (Lessons of Darkness, 1992) and The Wild Blue inability to “properly” communicate their means of existence. Yonder (2005), two other deeply impressionistic documentaries Because Herzog claims that all of the people in his films (both that form a sort of loose trilogy with Fata Morgana. Herzog has documentaries and fictional features) are sympathetic points of repeatedly said that in Fata Morgana and his other films, he is self-reference, as if he has been gradually filming his own life, capturing the “embarrassed landscapes of our world”, places their inability to communicate reflects the autodidactic Herzog’s where human colonisation has desecrated the earth. Likewise, his own struggle to find “a new grammar of images” capable of eerily beautiful landscapes are not meant to be picturesque and communicating his stories cinematically (16). To this end, subtle idyllic, but rather evocative of inner states, collective dreams and stylisation is employed in Land of Silence and Darkness and nightmares (12). This dual characteristic of his landscapes also virtually all of his documentaries (though only with subjects suggests that basic human consciousness has been desecrated by willing to cooperate in the process), whether by staging certain the forces of capitalism and modernity, an idea that can be found scenes for the camera, scripting bits of dialogue, or even in films ranging from The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser to more fabricating whole sequences from limited historical facts. In his “ethnographic” films like Where the Green Ants Dream, and Ten 1999 “Minnesota Declaration”, Herzog laid out the principles of Thousand Years Older. Landscapes often form the core of his his personal documentary style, attacking the failure of cinema films, and he lingers upon them in his overarching mission to vérité to go beyond a superficial “truth of accountants” based in find fresh images; he considers civilisation threatened by an objectively observable facts. Herzog distinguishes between exhaustion of images (linked to surface facts and a deeper, consumerism and mass media “ecstatic truth” that can only be technology like television) and reached “through fabrication a death of the imagination (13). and imagination and stylization” Aggressively surreal (17). As Elsaesser says, Herzog imagery would again fill his “wants to document the third film in Africa, Auch fascination that emanates from Zwerge haben klein angefangen the fictional or fantastic (Even Dwarfs Started Small, elements at the very heart of the 1970), a nihilistic black everyday occurrence” (18). comedy about inmates who Because his films vary wildly in rebel and take over their their degree of fabrication, it asylum. With a cast composed becomes very difficult to entirely of short-statured categorise them traditionally as people, the world of consumer either documentaries or fictional goods and bourgeois society appears vividly out of proportion, features, and Herzog views them all simply as “films”. Some of and so the dwarves begin destroying everything as they vent their his documentaries (e.g. Fata Morgana, The Wild Blue Yonder) anger toward a world not built for them. As in films like Kaspar dramatically challenge traditional documentary form, others are Hauser and Stroszek, the protagonists are somehow at odds with almost wholly fictionalised films in the guise of documentaries their surroundings, but while their reactions seem quite normal, it (, Gesualdo – Death for Five Voices), while is wider society that emerges as truly monstrous. Thomas still others provide the inspiration for his fictional features (e.g. Elsaesser notes that Dwarfs seems to be “Herzog’s way of Dark Glow of the Mountains and , Little Dieter representing his isolation after the 1968 Oberhausen Festival” Needs to Fly and Rescue Dawn). Meanwhile, his fictional and “the impossibility of combining political revolution with features are often shot like documentaries (always on location), radical subjectivity” (14). Indeed, Herzog intended the film to leaving purely aesthetic concerns behind; as with his ridicule the 1960s world revolution because he felt that the documentaries, historical and political facts are only loosely counterculture’s desire to overthrow the government and install a adhered to, for he always digs beneath the surface facts of history utopian socialist society was simplistic and narrow-minded at to find the “ecstatic truth” (19). best (15). After it was briefly banned, critics bashed Dwarfs as This would be the case in Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes anarchistic and blasphemous, and Herzog was denounced as a (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 1972), his first international success fascist. and the first of five collaborations with actor Klaus Kinski. Very Despite his problematic use of an all-disabled cast for loosely based upon Spanish conquistador Lope de Aguirre’s metaphoric purposes in Dwarfs, Handicapped Future would be a doomed expedition to find El Dorado, the film (perhaps Herzog’s practical documentary to raise public awareness about the need best) details one man’s descent into madness as he rebels against Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—5 the Spanish crown and nature alike. Aguirre is a quintessentially abnormalities, confirming their secret hopes that he truly is Herzogian (anti-)hero, encompassing both the “over-reacher and somehow different from them. Herzog describes Kaspar as “full prophet or underachiever and holy fool”, put in bizarre locations of basic and uncontaminated human dignity” (not unlike his and situations “often in order to let a strange and touching descriptions of indigenous tribes in other films), for although humanity emerge from impossible odds” (20). Aguirre’s mission Kaspar is an outsider, bourgeois society is what is truly at fault becomes a quixotic, even existential exercise in absurdity, for his eventual destruction (23). Elsaesser suggests that Kaspar especially as he proclaims himself superior to the laws of nature is also a metaphor for the filmmakers of the New German – though not without nature’s final retribution. Elsaesser notes Cinema: left abandoned and without a father generation, they are that Herzog’s heroes – “solitary rebels, incapable of solidarity uncertain about the means of socialisation, “attempting to survive but also incapable of success” – typically exist in an ontological between a good father substitute and a bad father image” (24). void due to their determination to investigate the limits of what it Filled with visions of Kaspar’s dreamed landscapes, the film means to be human; from one film to another, they oscillate seems to maintain an uneasy balance between Herzog’s anti- between being super-human and sub-human characters, both humanist views about civilisation and his genuine sympathy for types being dialectically linked via an eventual shared failure the very human Kaspar. Many of Herzog’s films feature this “that redeems their vaulting tension between the innate ambition and their hubris” (21). purity of humanity, the The attempted transgression or corrupting influence of society, transcendence of humanity’s and the all-powerful might of limits is a common theme in nature. films ranging from The Great After the critical Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner success of Kaspar Hauser, to Scream of Stone to Grizzly Herzog followed with another Man. Aguirre was widely read period film, Herz Aus Glas as an allegory for Nazism, but (Heart of Glass, 1976), about Herzog maintains that this was the fragility of civilisation in a not his intent, regardless of how pre-industrial Bavarian German art is misunderstood in village…. How Much light of its national history (22). Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976) is a documentary His next film, Die Grosse Ekstase des Bildschnitzers capturing the World Championship of Livestock Auctioneers in Steiner (The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, 1973), would Pennsylvania. The almost unintelligible speed, skill and document ski-jumper Walter Steiner’s flights and crashes, repetition with which the auctioneers conduct business fascinated focusing on the “ecstasy” of defying gravity while leaping almost Herzog because it seemed to be “the real poetry of capitalism”, a suicidally against the fear of death. Facing these fears becomes form of language pushed to the extremes of efficiency and another common theme for Herzog (who was an avid ski-jumper (literal) economy (26). This system is juxtaposed with the pre- as a youth), for many of his films focus upon dreams of flight or modern Amish farmers who come to watch the auction. Herzog the defiance of gravity (as transcendence of human limits) that would then return to the American Midwest to film Stroszek are then broken by sudden catastrophe, but later revisited and (1976), a fictional feature about an alcoholic man who moves overcome. For Steiner, catastrophe comes in an injurious crash from Germany to Wisconsin with his neighbour and a prostitute, from which he must pick himself up to go on jumping. But in only to find poverty and fatal disillusionment in place of the other films, it is a more traumatic event, often involving a family “American Dream”. Capitalist America becomes another society member’s death; examples include The Dark Glow of the that destroys the individual, but Herzog sees the film as less a Mountains, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Wings of Hope and The critique of the United States than “a eulogy” in the wake of . Scaling mountains (as in Fitzcarraldo or American Dream, for such shattered hopes could develop in Scream of Stone) is a recurrent means of defying gravity. virtually any country (27). Very documentary-like in style, His next feature, Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (The Stroszek is one of Herzog’s most natural features, and is certainly Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, 1974 – its German title means, one of his strongest. appropriately enough, “Every Man For Himself and God Against The documentary La Soufrière (1977) brought Herzog All”) would bring Herzog’s interest in language to the fore again, and his two-man crew to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe just this time based on the true story of a young man who was before a volcano was set to obliterate it. They speak with the few imprisoned for his first 16 years and then turned loose into an people who have refused to evacuate, several natives too poor to early 19th century German city without any conception of leave and start a new life elsewhere. Herzog has later noted that civilisation. Unable to speak more than a few pre-rehearsed this picture was one of the only times that he consciously put sentences, Kaspar is able to see the world with completely fresh himself in real danger while filming, but that there is “an element eyes (much like the aliens in the original concept for Fata of self-mockery in the final film”, for the volcano so precisely Morgana) and must quickly learn to communicate with his predicted to erupt never actually did so, leaving the film as a sort surroundings. The townspeople take an immediate interest in of banal chase towards a catastrophe that never occurred (28). him, whether by exhibiting him as a freak or by trying to study Events such as this have earned Herzog a rather exaggerated and educate him. He is finally murdered under suspicious reputation as a risk-taker and an inviter of danger. circumstances (perhaps having been related to royalty) and the His next two features (both starring Kinski), filmed town is delighted to learn that Kaspar’s autopsied brain shows back-to-back in 1979, saw Herzog looking to earlier, “legitimate” Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—6

German culture: Nosferatu the Vampyre (from Murnau’s 1922 reaches the other side of the mountain, the natives cut it loose, film) and Woyzeck (from Georg Büchner’s dramatic fragment, sending it into violent rapids to appease the spirits residing there. posthumously published in 1879). Although many scenes and Fitzcarraldo ultimately fails in his mission, but limps back to port images (e.g. the vampire’s physical appearance) are obvious with a compromised version of his dream – a dream that money adaptations from Murnau’s film, Herzog’s retelling of the well- alone cannot buy – still intact. A chaotic four years in the known Dracula story feels overall closer to the revived making, the film’s completion was as much a Sisyphean task as Gothicism of Bram Stoker’s 1897 source novel than Murnau’s Fitzcarraldo’s own quest to elevate his dreams over reality – Expressionism. The vampire is another of Herzog’s existential especially because Herzog used no miniatures or special effects heroes, an outsider who transcends the limits of human in order to pull the full-sized steamboat up and over the possibility through his undead-ness, evoking the terrors of nature mountain, determined to give the film a wholly natural sense of (i.e. the plague) in his wake. As in Heart of Glass, bourgeois wonder and physical magic (31). Despite many wild society is turned inside out by a sudden change when the plague controversies surrounding the film’s making, it earned Herzog a arrives, and after Dr Van Helsing finally drives a stake through Best Director award at the 1982 . the vampire’s heart, the insipid town bureaucrats attempt to arrest Herzog directed three films in 1984, one of which, him for murder, forgetting that the plague has already wiped out Gasherbrum – Der leuchtende Berg (The Dark Glow of the the town’s government, police force and judicial system. … Mountains), follows the recurrent theme of an individual pushing Two contrasting documentaries about religious faith in against human limits in defiance of gravity, but now forced to the United States were produced in 1980: Glaube und Währung return to and overcome an earlier trauma. Famous mountaineer (God’s Angry Man) and Huie’s Reinhold Messner lost a brother Predigt (Huie’s Sermon). during a climbing expedition in Originally titled Creed and the Himalayas, but still Currency, the first of these persisted in climbing all of the documents the eccentric world’s tallest peaks without televangelist Dr Gene Scott, oxygen tanks. Herzog takes him whose California-based back to the mountain that broadcast is a humorously claimed his brother and later aggressive and absurdly follows Messner as he embarks fanatical plea for financial upon a continuous oxygen-free pledges. Declaring that “God’s climb of two 8,000-meter honor is at stake every night”, mountains. Messner is a Scott represents a radical somewhat difficult figure for yoking together of zealotry and Herzog because he ostensibly consumer capitalism. Herzog seems to embody the describes him as “appeal[ing] to the paranoia and craziness of “adventurer” lifestyle that Herzog so despises; according to our civilization” (29) – but this is in marked contrast to Herzog, “adventuring” is an egocentric act that embarrasses Brooklyn-based Bishop Huie Rogers, the subject of the second landscapes by relying upon clichés about being pushed to the documentary. Although both figures are very successful in their limits of humanity and conquering nature. For Herzog, however, aims, Rogers is the antithesis of Scott’s fanaticism. Huie’s nature is not a conquerable entity, nor are most of the subjects of Sermon is a straightforward look at how an unassuming his films adventurers in this sense. Transcending the bounds of clergyman can bolster faith and significantly engage his listeners humanity should not be a pastime, but rather a selfless without the exploitative and deliberately alarming means used by compulsion, an essential part of one’s identity and a means of Scott. Each film captures a different form of faith in action, but justifying one’s own existence. In Messner’s case, he is Rogers emerges as easily the more sympathetic of the two men. compelled to re-climb the same mountains, including the one that Figuring it as a “distant religious echo” from his teenage period killed his brother, because mountaineering is as much a part of of intense Catholic belief (30), Herzog’s films often focus upon him as life itself (32). faith, whether a faith in one’s own ambitions, a Romantic faith in Much more controversial would be Herzog’s the shadow of all-powerful nature, or a faith in religious or documentary Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten (Ballad of the Little superstitious idea(l)s seemingly at odds with society or Soldier, 1984), a look at child soldiers fighting against the conventional reason. Sandinistas on behalf of the Miskito Indians, an indigenous These forms of faith would converge in Fitzcarraldo group long victimised by the ruling powers in Nicaragua. (1982), one of Herzog’s finest and most well known films, as According to the film, Sandinista troops destroyed over 60 much the product of his faith in filmmaking (see ’s Miskito villages in an effort to launch their program of scientific documentary about the film’s production, ) as socialism. The film was viciously attacked as anti-Sandinista in the power of the cinematic image. Described by Herzog as his propaganda, despite Herzog’s claim that it is not a political work. best “documentary”, it is a fictional feature that details a wealthy He claims that the film’s emphasis is not on the specific political industrialist’s obsessive quest to bring European opera to the or historical background of the Miskito-Sandinista conflict – . To finance his dream of building a new opera house, though he is sympathetic to the Miskitos while endorsing neither this “Conquistador of the Useless” travels upriver and, with the side – but rather on the human element that could take place in help of local indigenous peoples, literally pulls a huge steamboat any country: the tragedy of children marched off to war with the over a mountainside to access a fertile tributary. After the boat instruments of death placed in their hands (33). George Paul Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—7

Csicsery’s analysis of the film echoes Herzog’s sentiments, gift. The court case goes on and on, but eventually the mining though he points out that while Indian rebellions have figured in company wins and the aborigines take off in the plane, flying films like Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, now Herzog is finally into oblivion. The film’s sympathies are clearly with the filming from the side of the Indians themselves. Csicsery notes aborigines, their plight to preserve their heritage from colonisers, that Herzog and his assistant director Denis Reichle use this and the problems posed by cross-cultural communication conflict to draw connections to “all boys who have fought for all differences when native languages are being wiped out. desperate lost causes throughout history.” Because Reichle However, the film also leans toward a somewhat ethnographic himself was drafted as a teenage German soldier in the closing view of aboriginal life. Herzog notes that because he does not days of World War II, he is now atoning for his own sins claim to fully understand their ways, much of the film was (revisiting a past trauma to overcome it) by highlighting the invented, including various depictions of aboriginal culture. “I “endless cycle of more death” embodied in the figure of the child respect them as a people who are in a deep struggle to keep their soldier, thus subverting the romanticised “cult of the young hero visions alive,” he says, “and because my own understanding of sacrificing himself for his country in the full bloom of them was limited, I wanted to develop my own mythology” (36). innocence” that so appealed to the Nazis. Csicsery goes on to Herzog is after showing the deeper truths of their cultural observe that Herzog’s film is as much about the personal risks struggle, even if it means stylising his own interpretations of and travails of the filmmakers themselves as it is about the their belief system. He is less concerned about misrepresenting documentary’s subjects, thus “objective” facts about a culture blurring the line between than about portraying the documentary and fiction, underlying conflicts of a group making the film nihilistically at odds with modern apolitical (34). Ballad of the civilisation. As Elsaesser Little Soldier illustrates one of observes, Herzog retains “a the more potentially ‘stupid’ eye, one that is merely problematic elements in curious rather than knowing or Herzog’s films: in his efforts at demonstrative” (as in stylisation and evocation of the ethnographic films). Whether in “ecstatic truth”, poetry is fictional features or always more important than documentaries, his method of politics, leaving observable superimposing myths over facts to be loosely filtered politically or historically through Herzog’s creative lens. analysable situations provides a Because there is such a strong narratological framework that is authorial voice in his “both deliberately inadequate documentaries (and also a and highly ironic: it implies literal authorial voice, because he narrates his own films, other models of understanding which are subverted by a retaining the power of the speaking subject), it becomes very commentary at once ludicrous and solemn” (37). difficult to discern the “facts” of a given situation, resulting in After shooting a short documentary self-portrait called much criticism over concerns of historical accuracy and political Portrait Werner Herzog (1986), Cobra Verde (1987), his final content. collaboration with Kinski, would indirectly address colonialism His position as a white European speaking subject again in its fictional story of a bandit sent to the west coast of remains controversial because by deliberately stripping historical Africa as a slave catcher, only to become a slave himself before and political contexts from his films, his focus on the human or leading a rebel army of female soldiers to overthrow the king. natural elements retains a certain romanticised (and potentially After it is learned that the king is already dead, Cobra Verde politically incorrect) air. Aside from anthropomorphising nature turns his back on a position of great power and instead dies in many of his films (35), his depiction of indigenous peoples is during a futile attempt to escape into the sea. Herzog insists that often sympathetic (in part because of their proximity to and the film is “about great fantasies and follies of the human spirit, respect for nature), but generally emphasises a certain natural not colonialism” (38). Although the film points toward the fine purity or primitiveness lacking in Western/European society. line between freedom and , inverting notions of otherness Often using colonialism (whether physical or cultural) to show throughout the plot, Herzog is satisfied to focus primarily upon how one group makes outsiders of another group, he wishes to Cobra Verde’s existential struggle for freedom and self- challenge bourgeois society by showing its decadence and definition, not the historical or political context of slavery. corruption, but also to illustrate the fragile boundary between Furthermore, he claims that his films are anthropological or civilisation and a chaotic state of nature. Although his intent is to ethnographic “only in as much as they try to explore the human critique Western society, he does so in what could be seen as condition at this particular time on this planet. I do not make potentially negative ways. Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen films using images only of clouds and trees; I work with human (Where the Green Ants Dream, 1984) is an example of a fictional beings because the way they function in different cultural groups feature (loosely based on historical facts) that bears this tension. interests me”, though he claims to have never made a film with When a group of Australian aborigines go to court to prevent a the explicit purpose of studying a particular cultural group (39). mining company from desecrating one of their culture’s sacred For example, in his next documentary, Wodaabe – Dei Hirten sites, they are given an airplane and a runway in the Outback as a der Sonne (Wodaabe – Herdsmen of the Sun, 1989), he films the Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—8 male beauty contests of the Wodaabe people in Africa. Because topics as magic, athletic agility, camera orientation, landscapes there is no voiceover, he is not the sort of all-knowing Western and even advanced mathematics. interpreter found in ethnographic films, but neither does he The documentary Lessons of Darkness brings the horror invent his own mythology around the customs (as he has done in of the 1991 Gulf War to a more surreal and cinematic level – “by other films, such as Where the Green Ants Dream). By using transforming things that are physically there into more classical European music over the images, he allegedly stylises intensified, elevated, and stylised images”, as Herzog says of his the film into “a story about beauty and desire” instead of a overarching filmmaking process – separating the images of traditional ethnographic documentary (40). But despite his intent, burning oil fields and massive destruction from their specific his stylisation of facts and apolitical viewpoint can nevertheless circumstances. As with Ballad of the Little Soldier, some people render a number of his films especially problematic, notably attacked him for removing a historical or political context, while when he also occupies the role of documentary narrator (and others criticised him for “aestheticising” the horror and not therefore, Western speaking subject). naming any historical particulars of the war, but the film was The documentary Echoes aus einem düsteren Reich generally a critical success (42). The images are treated as if (Echoes from a Somber Empire, 1990) brought Herzog back to from any war throughout history, receiving a certain unearthly Africa to revisit various places marked by events during the reign detachment through Herzog’s narration. The same sort of of the Central African Republic’s Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa, science-fiction framework from Fata Morgana operates here, a despot renowned for numerous crimes and atrocities, including using alien eyes to see only the “embarrassed landscapes” of a cannibalism. Using archive footage intercut with discussions planet and the strange creatures (e.g. heavy-suited firefighters with the victims, wives and enemies of Bokassa, Herzog paints a and a boy who has lost the ability to talk) that inhabit it. grim picture of a power-mad Reminiscent of Fata Morgana‘s dictator and a legacy of horror. creation myth structure, Lessons As with Ballad of the Little of Darkness is divided into Solider, his perspective is pseudo-biblical chapters, ending aimed less at the specific with a certain ontological crisis history of Bokassa’s time in as the now-extinguished oil power than at the more wells are reignited just so there universal issue of the lurid and will be something for the evil extremes toward which the firefighters to battle against human psyche can devolve. In a again. sense, Echoes is Herzog’s own It was followed by Heart of Darkness, a look into another of Herzog’s most the depths of one man’s stylised (and best) nightmares, and an appropriate documentaries, Glocken aus der real-life corollary to the sort of Tiefe (Bells from the Deep, mad (though usually more 1993), which focuses on the benign) dreamers that frequent thin line between religious faith Herzog’s films. and superstition in Siberia, particularly concerning a mythic city Das excentrische Privattheater des Maharadjah von that supposedly exists at the bottom of a deep lake. Faith in such Udaipur (The Eccentric Private Theatre of the Maharaja of beliefs becomes another instance of the collective dreams that Udaipur, 1991) is a rather straightforward documentary about an exist at the tattered edges of modern civilisation. Herzog admits extremely extravagant day-long event for the Maharaja of that much of the film was fabricated, though it still captures the Udaipur in India. With over a thousand performers and countless “ecstatic truth” surrounding the different phenomena that hours of preparation leading up to a single unrepeatable show, believers and pilgrims will embrace out of a sort of desperate the one glorious and fleeting moment in time takes on almost faith. Pilgrimages and the strength of faith would be a topic for absurd dimensions. Herzog’s second film of 1991 is Schrei aus several of his later documentaries, including Gott and die Stein (Scream of Stone), a fictional feature about two men, a Beladenen (The Lord and the Laden, 1999), Pilgrimage (2001) mountaineer and a free-climber, who compete to see who is the and Rad der Zeit (Wheel of Time, 2003). Filmed in Mexico and world’s greatest climber. Tensions mount as the two climbers Guatemala, The Lord and the Laden looks at how the Catholic must race up opposite sides of the same mountain, braving Church has tried to superimpose its belief system over the Mayan extreme conditions and landscapes. Based on an original idea by god Maximón, and how worship of the resulting syncretic deity Reinhold Messner, the film follows in the same vein as The Dark blends faith and superstition in fascinating ways that cause the Glow of the Mountains, but in a more conventional fictitious Church some unease. The short Pilgrimage is composed of narrative. The resulting film is somewhat commonplace and footage from various pilgrimages around the world, including Herzog, who liked the idea of reviving the German “mountain sequences from Bells from the Deep and The Lord and the film” genre, has since considered it too much of an artistic Laden. The resulting film is more of a musical poem than compromise, having had little input on the screenplay (41). Also anything else. Wheel of Time is a fuller reflection upon in 1991, Herzog directed the 4-hour (8-part) TV miniseries Film pilgrimages and faith, focusing on one in which thousands of Lesson, featuring such guest lecturers as a magician, a tightrope Buddhists from around the world converge on a location where walker, a cosmologist, director Volker Schlöndorff, and Herzog the Dalai Lama oversees the construction of an intricately himself. These strange but imaginative lessons focus upon such detailed sand mandala representing the Buddhist conception of Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—9 time and the universe. Though the ceremonies only last several position. Breitbart begins having premonitions about the fate of days before the Wheel of Time is wiped away, some pilgrims the Jewish people and decides to drop his cover to warn them, travel on foot for years (we see one who stops to bow his head to only to be brought to trial and eventually to die from a small nail the ground after every step) just to reach the spot. This sort of scratch. Since Signs of Life only uses World War II as a quiet devotion fascinates Herzog as he tries to capture images of great backdrop for its existential themes, Invincible is probably spirituality on film. Herzog’s first film to directly address Nazism, but it does so Die Verwandlung der Welt in Musik (The through familiar Herzogian tropes: the visionary strongman Transformation of the World into Music, 1994) documents figure is also the social outsider doomed to failure, faith in Herzog’s efforts to stage Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Bayreuth (occult) superstitions undergirds the Third Reich’s will to power, Opera Festival. He has directed operas (mostly by Wagner) collective madness prevails in a society that destroys the periodically since 1986, including a performance of Schiller’s individual, and Breitbart’s inability to properly communicate the Giovanna d’Arco that he filmed in 1989. The influence of opera coming danger puts him at odds with not only the Nazis but his is obvious in Fitzcarraldo, but the music also makes its way into own people. The film garnered favourable reviews, even if it many of Herzog’s other films. … remains one of Herzog’s least memorable fictional features…. His next two documentaries, Flucht aus Laos (Little His greatest critical success in many years, Grizzly Man Dieter Needs to Fly, 1997) and Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel (2005) explores the life and death of environmentalist Timothy (Wings of Hope, 1999), each follow the sort of pattern Treadwell, who lived illegally in an Alaskan wildlife refuge for established by The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner and The many seasons, studying and trying to protect grizzly bears. Much Dark Glow of the Mountains, bringing their subjects back to the of the film is composed of Treadwell’s own footage of himself as scene of an earlier trauma involving flight or defiance of gravity. a self-styled crusader for the bears; Herzog duly notes his respect In the former, German–American returns to the for Treadwell as a fellow filmmaker, especially in his depictions jungles of Laos where he had been shot down during his first of the natural world. However, Herzog chastises Treadwell’s mission as a pilot in the paranoid persecution fantasies . The film tells of (in one scene he comments that his harrowing journey of Treadwell’s furious ravings are survival in a POW camp, his like fits he has seen on movie return to civilisation, and above sets, subtly referring to Kinski) all, his unquenchable love of and his lack of respect for the flying. The film was critically dangers of nature. Various very well received, though friends and officials weigh in on some criticised Herzog for not Treadwell’s life, and the denouncing the war or taking a conclusion is reached that political position. In addition, Treadwell’s death resulted from Dengler’s story would provide following his dream of crossing the basis for Herzog’s fictional the boundary between man and feature Rescue Dawn (2006). bear. Because he wanted to Wings of Hope takes Juliane leave humanity altogether and Köpcke back to the Peruvian become a bear, Treadwell risked jungle where she was the sole (and finally lost) his life to a survivor of a plane crash that killed her family in 1971. We learn natural universe that Herzog describes as full of murder, chaos that Herzog himself had been scheduled to be on the same flight, and death. As with My Best Fiend, Herzog refrains from stylising as it was during the filming of Aguirre, but by chance he was not. much of the film since its subject is dead and thus unable to The film follows the circumstances of Juliane’s miraculous cooperate with or respond to Herzog’s fabrications. survival and her struggles of endurance in the jungle. Herzog’s The Wild Blue Yonder is a strange and impressionistic next film is Mein liebster Feind (My Best Fiend, 1999), an documentary in the same vein as Fata Morgana and Lessons of enjoyable documentary about his working relationship with Darkness, as if composing the third film in a sort of “science- Klaus Kinski (who died in 1991), featuring interviews with cast fiction” trilogy. Divided into chapters like Lessons of Darkness, members of various films, various footage of Kinski in action the film is narrated onscreen by an alien whose species has both on- and off-set, and Herzog’s remembrances of Kinski’s unsuccessfully attempted to colonise Earth. He tells of how the life. Earth’s environment has become so unlivable that a crew of Following The Lord and the Laden and Pilgrimage, his astronauts in orbit are sent on what may be a suicide mission to fictional feature Invincible takes loose details about several discover new planets capable of sustaining life. The astronauts historical figures from the 1920s and moves them to the period of eventually discover the alien’s own aquatic planet and begin the Nazi Party’s rise to power in early-1930s Germany. Zishe exploring it, later draining it of its natural resources and making Breitbart (Jouko Ahola) is a Jewish strongman whose ethnic it unlivable as well. As the astronauts return to Earth, they identity is kept hidden while performing as the Aryan hero discover that human life has been entirely wiped out, leaving Siegfried (one of Wagner’s operatic heroes) in a popular stage only ruins, and that nature has taken over again, healing the show. Meanwhile, a hypnotist (who keeps his own Jewish planet’s wounds. Herzog fashions this pseudo-documentary ethnicity a secret) (Tim Roth) tries to exploit Hitler’s interest in narrative from footage of a 1989 space shuttle mission, scenes the occult and work his way into a powerful government from a scuba journey beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, unused Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—10 shots from The White Diamond and interviews with an see the finished work I am going to eat my shoe.’ And he did astrophysicist talking about wormholes in space. Although make the film, a wonderful work called Gates of Heaven about a Herzog himself once considered joining NASA just to film new pet cemetery. images in space (45), The Wild Blue Yonder is intended as a When I arrived in Berkeley I was wearing the same critique of space exploration. He claims that the chances of shoes as when I had made my vow to Errol. The problem was finding life-sustaining environments in space are so slim (and so that when I cooked them, that day at the restaurant they had duck far away) that such exploration is a huge waste of time and as a main course and there was a huge pot of duck fat sitting resources that could be better spent improving our own world there. I had reckoned that the duck fat would come to a boiling (46). If Grizzly Man‘s Timothy Treadwell went too far in his point at about 140*C and I would be better off cooking the shoes efforts to protect one species of bear, The Wild Blue Yonder‘s in fat than in boiling water. What happened was that the hot fat closing images of nature reclaiming an unpeopled planet Earth made the leather shrink and it became even tougher. There was suggests Herzog’s own environmental warning about the future: absolutely no way to eat it unless I cut the leather into tiny the power of nature is not to be trifled with, for the self-sufficient fragments with a pair of poultry shears and swallowed it down Earth will exist long after humanity has wiped itself out through with a lot of beer. I had a whole six-pack of beer which I drank, war, pollution and death. Perhaps Herzog’s more “ethnographic” and I remember kind of staggering out of this place pretty drunk. films (and others like Heart of Glass) are a part of this anti- But don’t worry, leather is very easy to digest. And Tom Luddy, humanist viewpoint, since by looking at more supposedly who was up there on the stage with me, started distributing small “primitive” cultures, we can see the fragility of our “modern” pieces around the audience. civilisation, looking simultaneously back to the past and beyond to the future end of human existence. Historical and political contexts do indeed drop away in the face of our species’ relatively brief moment in geological time. Herzog’s latest film is Rescue Dawn, a fictional feature based on Little Dieter Needs to Fly. He has described the film’s production as the worst he has seen in many years (47), but such adversity tends to produce great results for Herzog. In his own words, “cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.” He does not consider his own films to be art, but rather artisanal products akin to poetry. Likewise, he typically ignores or rejects critical analyses of his work, making films without pre-established themes in mind. As critical of high-minded European art cinema as he is of artificial Hollywood pictures (48), it can be difficult to summarise his work without falling into the traps he has laid out for would-be critics. Nevertheless, Herzog remains one of cinema’s most I had a kind of tacit agreement with Les Blank that the fascinating and energetic filmmakers, and his oeuvre contains a resulting film was something strictly for the family album. I had number of tropes that shed much light on how he constructs a just come from doing pre-production in for Fitzcarraldo very personal body of work, blurring the line between his and had the feeling his footage should not be screened to anyone peculiar subjects and his own experience as auteur. else. Maybe the film is too private for me to appreciate as something for the public. But Les is such a good filmmaker that I From Herzog on Herzog. Edited by Paul Cronin. Faber and forgive him anything, and today I cam kind of glad he captured it Faber, NY 2002. on film. A grown-up man should eat his shoes once in a while or do certain things that make equal sense. Today you hear about Les Blank’s Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is a wonderful short things like the shoe-eating out of context and it probably seems film. How on earth did you end up on a stage in Berkeley, bizarre, but it is not that I did it as a circus gimmick. It did make California, munching through your own leather boots? real sense in the context of events. And I did not ever mean to eat my shoe in public. I intended to eat it in the restaurant, but I was I was in Berkley with , who at the time was a pushed a little bit into it. graduate student. Errol is a very talented man, a real comrade in arms. He is one of the people who has started so many projects You stood up there and said that eating your shoes ‘should be an but never finished them that when you meet him you encouragement to all of you who want to make films and who are immediately see this agitation of mind, everything around is just scared to start’. aflame. He was one of the great hopes as a cello player until suddenly he abandoned the instrument. Then he said he wanted Sure, and I wanted to help Errol’s film, which at the time did not to make a film but would always complain to me about how have a distributor. And anyway, there should be more shoe- difficult it was to find money from producers. I insisted that it eating. was possible to make films without money, that it is faith alone and the intensity of your wishes and not money that result in …Fitzcarraldo is probably the film you’re best known for. Yet film. ‘Stop complaining about the stupidity of producers, just most discussions centre not around the film itself, but the start with one roll of film tomorrow,’ I told him. And the day I circumstances under which it was made. When you started to Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—11 work on the film in the Peruvian jungle, did you expect that the them. I thought I was dreaming, I just could not believe my eyes. media buzz would be so huge? Then I bought a tourist guidebook and read that science still has no clear answer how such big blocks were brought overland to What I did not expect were things like walking down the street in this spot 8,000 to 10,000 years ago and set upright with only Munich a few months after Fitzcarraldo came out and seeing a stone-age tools. It went on to claim that it must have been man running frantically towards me. All of a sudden he leapt up intergalactic aliens who put them up. This triggered me and I told in the air, kicked me in the stomach, picked himself up from the myself I was not going to leave until I had worked out a method ground and yelled, ‘That’s what you deserve, you pig!’ The how—with primitive tools—the stones had been erected. You problem was there were very real things going on in the area have to assume that in those days man had only simple hemp where we wanted to shoot that had absolutely nothing to do with ropes or leather thongs. I spent two days thinking about it until I the film at all. There was a border war building up between Peru came up with a solution. The method I would use is the and Ecuador and all around us we felt this enormous and following: I would call together 2,000 disciplined men. Let’s just increasingly military presence. At every second bend of the river assume that I would have to move a menhir over a distance of there would be a military camp swarming with drunken soldiers. two kilometers, First I would dig trenches under the stone. Next I There were also the oil companies who were exploiting the local would push oak tree trunks into the trenches and move away the oil fields in the areas of the rest of the earth, so that the nature Indians and who had— menhir would be resting on the with great brutality against the tree trunks. Once this is local population—constructed a accomplished the stone could pipeline across the Indians’ be moved on these wheels with territory and across the Andes ropes and levers. Give me two all the way to the Pacific. months and fifty men and I During construction they had would be able to move a rock brought in prostitutes and there maybe thirty feet high and 200 were frequent cases of rape. tonnes two kilometers overland. When we showed up The reason why I would require on location in the jungle with 2,000 men is that to get the the full permission of the local mehirs into the ground a ramp Indians, all the unsolved of huge proportions with a very problems somehow started to slight incline is necessary. It revolve around out presence. would actually allow an The media forgot about the war elevation of about twelve and the oil because we had real media appeal for them. As you metres and would end at an artificial mound with a crater hole. I know, was scheduled to be in the film alongside would move the menhir on its ‘wheels’ up the ramp toward the Claudia Cardinale, with as the original mound, finally tipping it into the hole. Once it tilts into the crater Fitzcarraldo. I certainly never wanted to become the dancing bear with its pointed, light end, you basically have an upright menhir. in the circus of the media, but all of a sudden there was a strange All that needs to be done is to remove the earth, the mount and concoction of Claudia and Jagger plus the mad Herzog, a bunch the ramp. of native Indians, a border war and a military dictatorship. Then a friend who years before had helped me raise Ultimately, it was not difficult to rubbish the claims the press money for Aguirre told me we should go back to the jungle and made, not least because a human rights group sent a commission make another film. I told him that I did not want to make a film down to the area and concluded that there had been not one in the jungle for the sake of shooting there, I needed a solid story. single violation. I had the feeling the wilder and more bizarre the He told me the true story of Jose Fermin Fitzcarrald, a fabulously legends were, the faster they would wither away, and this is what wealthy real-life rubber baron at the turn of the century, a man happened. After about two years of being criminalized by the who apparently had a private army of 5,000 men and a territory press, the whole thing just faded away. the size of Belgium. It was all very thin stuff for a film save one detail that he happened to mention: Fitzcarrald had once What was the starting point of the story of Brian Sweeney dismantled a boat, carried it overland from one river to the next Fitzgerald, the man who loves Caruso so much he wants to build and reassembled it once he had reached this parallel tributary. an opera house in the jungle and invite the world-famous tenor Suddenly I had my story, not a story about rubber, but one of to the opening night? grand opera in the jungle with these elements of Sisyphus. The real Fitzcarrald is not a very interesting character per se, just Two things stimulated me to make the film. The first was years another ugly businessman at the turn of the century, while the before I even thought of the story, when I was looking for history of the rubber industry in Peru did not interest me in the locations for another film, and took a drive along the Brittany slightest. Fitzcarraldo’s love of music was my idea, though of coast. At night I reached a place called Carnac and suddenly course the rubber barons of the past century did build an opera found myself in a huge field of menhirs—huge prehistoric stone house—the Teatro Amazonas—in . So the real historical blocks—stuck in the ground, some of them nearly thirty feet high elements of the story were for me merely a point of departure.… and weighing hundreds of tons. They go on for miles in parallel Though the film is set in an invented geography, I knew from the rows inland across the hills, there are something like 4,000 of Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—12 start that in telling this story we would have to pull a real boat In an interview from the time you said that if you were to make a over a real mountain. film like Fitzcarraldo again ‘there would be only ashes left of me’. Even before filming started you’d been in the jungle for a couple of years. Why did pre-production take so long? People tried to protect me from what they saw as my madness and folly, and at various times I was repeatedly asked, ‘Why In the film you see a rusty old boat which Fitzcarraldo repairs. don't you just rewrite the screenplay and cut out the whole thing We found it in Columbia, and it was beyond repair ….This ship of pulling the ship over the mountain?’ served as a model for two more identical boats we had to build. There was a lot to deal with. One time a crew member While one was being pulled up the mountain, we could be had a strange fit and burnt down my house, a beautiful thatched shooting with the other one in the rapids. For a long while hut on site built by the Indians. About ten days’ voyage further Twentieth Century Fox were interested in producing the film, but up Rio Camisea from where we were working lived the they proposed we use a model boat and a model mountain, and Amehuancas, a nomadic tribal group who had repelled all that was out of the question for me….preproduction took over attempts by missionaries and the military to contact them. That three years…. season was the driest in recorded history, and as the river And then, once shooting finally started and we had shot virtually dried out this group moved downriver, further than ever about 40 percent of the film, Robards became very ill and had to before, in search of turtle eggs. They attacked three locals ho return to the United States, and his doctor forbade him to return. were extras in the film and who were fishing in our camp, and In the meantime Jagger—who played shot a gigantic arrow right through the Fitzcarraldo’s retarded actor sidekick—had throat of one of the men, something you to honour his commitment to a Rolling can see in Burden of Dreams. His wife was Stones concert tour and so I had decided to hit by three arrows in her abdomen which write his character completely out of the left her in critical condition. It was too risky film because the man was irreplaceable. I to transport them anywhere, and so we liked him so much as a performer that any performed eight hours of emergency replacement would have been an surgery on a kitchen table. I assisted by embarrassment. He is a great actor, illuminating her abdominal cavity with a something I feel that nobody has yet seen. torchlight, and with my other hand sprayed And I liked his attitude very much. In with repellent the clouds of mosquitoes that he had a car we rented for him, and swarmed around the blood. The attack had when we had trouble getting people to occurred about a day’s voyage upriver, and various places he would chauffeur them for it came silently and in total darkness. us. I liked that he knew the value of real Nearly fifty of our best native extras left on work; he is an absolute professional in the a retaliatory raid but luckily never best sense of the word. Losing Mick was, I encountered any of the Amehuacas…. think, the biggest loss I have ever experienced as a film director.. And what was it like filming in Iquitos?

Is it true that once Robards had gone you Though we constructed an infrastructure thought about playing the role of there, filming was still very difficult. Fitzcarraldo yourself? Phoning long distance was practically impossible, power cuts would occur twice a day, the dirt road from town to our offices I would have played the part of Fitzcarraldo only as a last resort, was basically a swamp and taxi drivers would refuse to make the and would have been a good Fitzcarraldo simply because what journey. I may sound pathetic, but if I would have had to climb the character has to do in the film was exactly what I had to do as down to Hell itself and wrestle a film out of the claws of the the film’s director, and I would not have been undignified in the devil, I would have done so. It was just not possible for me to role. Of course I would not have been as good as Kinski, and I allow my private feelings of doubt whilst in the middle of thank God on my knees that Kinski did it. I met him in a hotel in making Fitzcarraldo. When I returned to Germany one time to New York and he was very supportive. I was devastated by try and hold all the investors in the film together they asked me, everything that had been going on down in Peru, and he opened a ‘How can you continue? Do you have the strength and the will bottle of champagne saying, “I knew it, Werner! I knew I would and the enthusiasm?’ And I said, ‘How can you ask this be Fitzcarraldo! You are not going to play the part because I am question? If I abandon this project I will be a man without much better than you.’ Of course, he was right. ‘When is the dreams and I do not want to live like that. I live my life or I end plane leaving for Peru?’ he asked. I truly liked him for his my life with this project.’ Had I allowed myself the privilege of professionalism, even though once he arrived at the site where hesitating for a single minute, or had I panicked for even a split the boat was o be pulled over the mountain and saw how steep second, the whole project would have come tumbling down the terrain was, his heart sank at once. He was convinced it could around me immediately. not be done and later became the strongest negative force on the But, you know, the final film was pretty much as I had film. always hoped it would be, with the exception of the Mick Jagger character. Once the film was finished, Claudia Cardinale said to Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—13 me, ‘Werner, when you came to four years ago, you looking down at you. When you were making the film there was explained your idea to me and all the difficulties we would have much talk in the press of you being an ‘adventurer’ in the jungle. to overcome. Now I see the film and it is exactly as you first Are you an adventurer? Or maybe an explorer? I’ve also read in described it.’… plenty of places that you’re most definitely a masochist too.

I think I would be the last one who could be labeled a masochist. It comes to this, plain and simple: things have to be done for the sake of the film, personal sacrifices maybe have to be made, and once you decide on a certain project like Fitzcarraldo, it just does not matter how many difficulties are encountered and how much pain it costs. …The hardships encountered do not interest me and they should not interest the public either. The only thing that counts is what you see on the screen. We have spoken of risk-taking and the accusations that I am a megalomaniac. Another one that comes up is that I purposely make things more difficult for myself and the actors. I assure you I would rather have filmed Fitzcarraldo in the middle of Central Park, the only problem being there is no jungle there. I would have directed from a suite on Fifth Avenue, just like a few One thing that always seemed a little unclear in the film to me is years later I would rather have filmed Scream of Stone in Munich exactly why the Indians agree to help Fitzcarraldo in the way where I could have slept in my own apartment and travelled to they do. the set on a funicular. For years I have been explaining that while maybe mountaineers are motivated to seek out the most difficult The Indians are just as obsessed as Fitzcarraldo is. While his routes, this would be wholly unprofessional and irresponsible for dream is to build an opera house, they want to rid themselves of me as a filmmaker.You can bet your life I would never have the evil spirits that inhabit the rapids, which is why they release made a single film if I had purposely sought out trouble. the ship into the rapids. They are on a mythic mission, one that Filmmaking is difficult enough already, and it is just plain bad Fitzcarraldo never quite understands. We spectators are similarly luck that I am drawn to characters like Fitzcarraldo whose left in the dark about their true motivation and never really mission is to pull a boat over a mountain. I am never seeking understand why they are toiling, why they go into all this trouble adventure; I am just doing normal work. to tow the ship over the mountain. Only when they cut it loose There is such a vast difference between exploring and and it hurtles through the rapids do we truly understand. By adventuring. I am curious. I am searching for new images and sacrificing the ship, they want to calm the evil spirits who dwell dignified places, but I am not an adventurer, even though I am in the rapids. So it is only the Indians who make their dream often given that contemptible tag. To me, adventure is a concept come true. They win and Fitzcarraldo loses, though ultimately he that applies only to those men and women of earlier historical converts this defeat into a triumph through the power of his times, like the medieval knights who travelled into the unknown. imagination and creative spirit. The concept has degenerated constantly since then and turned At the end of the film we know that Fitzcarraldo has into an ugly embarrassment when, in the nineteenth and bankrupted himself, yet that he will be up to more mischief twentieth centuries, people attempted to reach the North and before long. Who knows, a week later he might decide to finally South Poles. Such acts contradict my definition of adventure, for finish his trans-Amazon railway. This is a guy who will always those voyages served only the purpose of self-promotion, nothing stand his ground. And like him, we all have to make our own else. There is nothing interesting about the North Pole; it is just dreams come true, even if it is against all odds. An image like the water and drifting ice, and I feel the labeling of these kinds of ship moving across a mountain seems to give us all courage for voyages as the great remaining adventures of humankind was an our own dreams. This is a film that challenges the most basic embarrassment. laws of nature. Boats just are not meant to fly over mountains. Fitzcarraldo’s story is the victory of the weightlessness of dreams Is this something to do with the fact that so many of these kinds over the heaviness of reality. It defies gravity head on, and by the of voyagers have attempted to domesticate and conquer nature? film’s end I hope that the audience feels utterly elated and even lighter than when they went in. One reason I used opera music is Exactly, and that so many speak of their travels in such military the strange effect it creates in translating the reality of a boat terms. ‘We conquered the summit.’ ‘We returned victorious over moving over a mountain into dreams. Everyone always compares Mount Everest,’ I just cannot stand it. And what’s more, local the film to Aguirre because they both have Peru, jungle rivers mountain people do not climb the mountains; they respect them and Kinski. But as I explained earlier, it is actually much more much more than these so-called ‘adventurers’. There’s some foul like The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner because both men philosophy behind this quest of adventure. I would like to make a are dreamers who want to defy the laws of gravity…. comparison with a river that is sick. You find dead fish, white, bloated and belly up, floating in the water. Today, the concept of One of my favorite photos of you is on the set of adventure has this kind of rottenness to me. Oh, what a big shot Fitzcarraldo in the jungle, the clapper-board in your mouth and you were in 1910 when you came back from Africa and told the you’re clambering up the hillside while Kinski stands proudly ladies how many elephants you shot! Do the same thing at a Herzog—FITZCARRALDO—14

party today and you will have the first available glass of I particularly hate this old pseudo-adventurism where champagne tossed in your face. Very soon from now, the mountain climb becomes about confronting the extremes of ‘adventurers’ should receive the same treatment. humanity.

JUST FOUR MORE IN THE SPRING 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXII: Apr 5 Nagisa Ôshima MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE 1983 Apr 12 Stephen Frears THE GRIFTERS 1990 Apr 19 Jafar Panahi DAYEREH/THE CIRCLE 2000 Apr 26 Ridley Scott BLADE RUNNER1982

PRELIMINARY FILM LIST FOR FALL 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIII:

1933 Mervyn LeRoy, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 1938 Anthony Asquith & Leslie Howard, PYGMALION 1948 POWELL & PRESSBURGER THE RED SHOES 1959 Marcel Camus BLACK ORPHEUS 1963 Martin Ritt, HUD 1967 Arthur Penn BONNIE AND CLYDE 1967 Robert Bresson MOUCHETTE 1967 Frantisek Vlacil MARKETA LAZAROVÁ 1977 Peter Weir THE LAST WAVE 1981 István Szabó, MEPHISTO 1989 John Woo THE KILLER 1997 Erik Skjoldbjærg INSOMNIA 2008 Götz Spielmann REVANCHE 1964 George Cukor MY FAIR LADY

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The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.