The online journalism diploma module at JOMEC

An Ode to Werner and Klaus

Werner Herzog is one of the most innovative filmmakers of his era. A product of the New German cinema movement which espoused such contemporaries as Rainer Fassbinder, Herzog dares to take his camera to those corners of the Earth where the Hollywood union crews wouldn't dare.

Herzog's aesthetic embraces a simplistic point-and-shoot style, and his oft-improvised footage would let the image speak for itself, rare in a time where his American contemporaries such as Scorsese couldn't keep their cameras still. Notable visual trademarks include the strong presence of animals indulging in unusual activity, a strong tribal or native influence in some films, and even hypnotism.

As Rescue Dawn, the dramatization of captured German pilot and POW Dieter Dengler finally gets released in the UK this week, I have decided to elaborate my feelings on the enigmatic German director who has been beaten, shot, near-drowned and, in an amazing display of bravery, collaborated with the raving Klaus Kinski five times in the course of his career.

My favourite - Stroszek

Stroszek is the most emotionally wrought of Herzog’s work, an expose of the American heartland’s cruel underbelly, where immigration and hard toil do not lead to the escape or riches promised in the stories. This was the last film Joy Division’s Ian Curtis watched before he hung himself, lending the film a further morbid cult status.

Bruno S. was a vagrant street musician and the abandoned son of a prostitute when he was discovered by Werner Herzog, who cast him as the titular lead in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

Here he delivers a performance of extraordinary power as Bruno Stroszek. A poor street singer just out of prison, Stroszek is beyond delusional - mad in fact - but he also stands for the sad naivety of any dreamer who ever felt the itch to take flight of the squalor that surrounds them.

Travelling to Wisconsin with his eccentric elderly neighbour Scheitz, and prostitute Eva (Eva Mattes), he is unable to speak English at first, reliant entirely on his two friends.

He descends into alcoholism as the repossession of his trailer and possessions looms, and Eva returns to prostitution to compensate for their destitution.

Herzog’s film is bleak, but encapsulates the mood of strangers in strange lands. It also manages to display a dark thread of humour in morbidity, particularly in its climax, featuring a famous final shot of a dancing chicken.

Overall best works - Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Citing an example of Herzog’s seminal work over four decades of prolific output was too difficult, so I have instead chosen two films made at the peak of his creativity which are inexorably linked.

Both feature barking mad Pole Klaus Kinski as the titular characters, and are among the actor's strongest. Kinski was an anomaly of a performer, relegated to B-movie schlock for the majority of his career, but who turned in ferocious performances with Herzog's aid.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo both weave tales of dreamers with very different natures.
Herzog shot the former with a camera stolen from the Munich Film School, on a budget of 370 thousand dollars. The director truly felt it was his right to take the camera, and that the ends justified the means.

The decision resulted in a film of unparalleled beauty. The opening shots, following a procession of conquistadors vein-like down the side of a misty Peruvian mountain, rank among the finest in any film I have ever seen.

Aguirre leads his expedition on the search for the fabled El Dorado, leading to bloodshed, starvation and madness. In one scene, his conquistadors and their slaves drag cannons through the deep jungles on a quest for glory.

Likewise, in Fitzcarraldo, made ten years later on a far grander budget, main protagonist Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald dreams of bringing an opera house to the natives of the Peruvian jungle. Here too, Herzog generates a naturalised sense of awe, not with explosions or car chases, but instead in epochal moments, such as having his native followers drag a real steamboat uphill on rollers.

Klaus Kinski, despite his apparent flaws as a human being, was the beating heart behind his collaborations with Herzog, who provided the head. As Aguirre, his performance is controlled, exploding into occasional moments of voracity. This was at the specific request of his director, who wanted Kinski to exude a quiet menace, much to the actor's discontent.

His performance as Brian Sweeney Fitzgerrald is more unhinged, but admirable in its enthusiasm, emerging as an unlikely anti-hero despite the trials faced by the natives who set out to accomplish his improbable visions.

The quests of both these wild-eyed men are failures, but Kinski and Herzog show us two sides of the human spirit, the indomitable and the mad, in a way that few filmmakers have managed quite as well since.

Ones to miss?

This is not so much an indictment as a warning that several of Herzog’s films and documentaries can be fairly hard slog for first time viewers of his work. Therefore these following examples are not necessarily ones to miss, but ones to warm up to.

Herzog had the cast of 1976’s Heart of Glass perform under hypnosis, which some critics at the time praised while others derided as gimmickry. It is still visually stunning however, thanks largely to Jorg Schmidt Reitwein's cinematography and a typically serene score from Herzog stalwarts Popul Voh.

Fata Morgana is a 1969 documentary about mirages, which is both frustrating and transfixing at the same time, crafting a visual poem of deserts and wasteland to the recitation of the Mayan creation myth by German poet Lotte Eisner. I had trouble with it at first, as the first ten minutes is footage of planes landing, but even though it is one of the director's less accessible documentaries, there's something strangely mesmeric about Fata Morgana.

After the ninth or tenth plane landed, and the haze rose ever further, it just clicked for me and I sat rapt through images of desert wastelands and wildlife for the next 70 minutes. For viewers not accustomed to Werner Herzog, it is perhaps better to begin with his more famous documentaries Little Dieter Needs to Fly or Grizzly Man however.

The following clips I have chosen to represent two emphatically different sides to Kinski's character. The first is from the climax of Herzog's 1999 documentary My Best Fiend chronicling the pair's tumulous relationship. This footage, sound tracked by Popul Voh, is an indication that Kinski could display sensitivity and grace.

The second clip is from the first scene of 1979's Woyzeck, an adaptation of a piece by famous German playwright Georg Buchner, which ranks alongside Aguirre as one of the director's most powerful opening sequences. The film was produced in 18 days and features only 27 cuts. It is often considered his most intense performance. I would love to hear your thoughts on them.