The Films of Werner Herzog

THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

When Brian Gilbert of the State Library of Queensland asked me if I might be willing to introduce this session of early films by Werner Herzog, I was only too eager to accept his offer. After all, Herzog is my favourite German director. But when I attempted to imagine my introduction I felt that this affection simply was not enough.

I had just started reading "New Australian Cinema" by Brian McFarlane and Geoff Mayer. One of their main perspectives is the attempt to explain the difference between Aussie and Hollywood filmmaking by way of the rather unstructured narrative, without a proper build-up to a climax etc. And it struck me that German cinema, at least in that respect, must be considered as pretty similar to the Australian film. There are all these wonderful, spirited ideas at the onset. But one after one they dwindle along the film, fizzle out, or dissipate like mighty streams from the Great Dividing Range on their way to Lake Eyre. Probably the anti-climax is more common than the climax. Still, the over-all approach is usually balanced, thus indicating that painting obviously is much nearer to many German directors than theatre. An assumption backed by the fact that many of the foreground names of the New German Cinema have a dedicated past in experimental short films.

Once led on to this path, it is interesting to investigate German film in terms similar to the Australian cinema: the Germaness, our national myths etc. Not many have tried this before, at least to my knowledge, so I am completely aware that I am on shaky ground. Especially with none of my German film books around to help me. Still, it seems worth a try.

Let’s have a short look at Rainer Werner Faßbinder. His oeuvre is firmly located in Germany and nowhere else in this whole wide world. In fact, it’s hard to imagine it situated somewhere else. It covers a comparatively long span of German history (ca 150 years) but is always very precise in depicting its historical setting and thus clearly defining a certain historical moment. His heroes are ordinary people, but they are heroes indeed. Often, they are women, even strong women, from Effi Briest to Veronika Voss (who eventually have to submit to a male-run society). His cinematography is down to earth, even sloppy at times - definitely nothing to bother too much about, no matter if Faßbinder himself, Michael Ballhaus or Xaver Schwarzenberger act as DOP. All this contrasts and relates at the same time to the person Faßbinder - an outcast of society in his often provocative macho-leather homosexuality, his defiance of authority to the point of Anarchism, his reckless self-destruction by way of excessive use of cocaine to be able to stay creative. All these characteristics are not too often attributed to Germans.

Let’s have a short look at Wim Wenders. His films, at least the earlier ones, are situated in Germany as well. But it’s a contemporary Germany with a strong flavour of timelessness. The actual historical setting often can be best defined by the latest technological bric-a-brac: all the way from his use of the Polaroid in Alice in the Cities to the computer games in Till the Ends of the World. Otherwise, time lingers on. So does the narrative - in terms of structure, in terms of length. This attitude requires a director of cinematography able to catch even subtle notions and motions - no wonder Robby Müller has been his artistic companion for 22 years now. Wenders’ heroes are more anti-heroes: rather soft characters (perhaps influenced by his writer-friend Peter Handke), uprooted by their own will and a philosophical view on the state of things rather than by social or political conditions. Women are hardly more than props in a chosen surrounding. Not unlike his heroes, Wenders wanders the world, attracted by the dissimilarities - like Germans, today’s most fervent travellers, have done since the Germanic days about 2,000 years ago when they brought horror to the Roman Empire. Like so many artists before him, in the end he is always rejected from the country of his dreams. He withdraws into seclusion, predictably brooding and over-serious about his next film.

Admitting over-simplification it could be stated nevertheless that the atypical German Faßbinder creates films with a typical German content (possibly with an atypical approach) whereas the true German Wenders produces atypical German contents though with a typical German approach.

And Werner Herzog? He was born on the 5th of September, 1942 as Werner Stipetic, son of a Croatian father and a German mother, in Munich, but grew up on a farm in the German Alps. Though he chose to call himself “Herzog” a long, long time ago and does not seem to have had much contact with his father at all, he is still highly recognised in today’s Croatia. And the name “Stipeti}” appears quite frequently in the credits of his earlier films - his brother helping out in this cottage industry called New German Cinema. Herzog studied history, literature and theatre in Munich and Pittsburgh/USA, but like so many of his German colleagues gave up his studies early. Self-taught, he started filmmaking in 1962. In 1968 he was the only German filmmaker screening his films at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival - all his colleagues boycotted it because of censorship exercised by the festival. In 1974 he walked all the way from Munich to Paris to visit the seriously ill filmhistorian Lotte Eisner, believing she would not die if he achieved this pilgrimage. In 1983 he played the father in Paul Cox’s Man of Flowers. Herzog states that his soul feels nearest to the late Middle Ages and that he would dare to re-do Hamlet after Shakespeare.

No matter how German or un-German you would call a character like this - his films are archetypally German in their quest for the Holy Grail or rather the search for the Blue Flower of Romanticism, to name the nearest German equivalent. No aim is weird enough, no country too distant to be depicted in a film. El Dorado in the Peruvian jungle [Aguirre], an opera-house in the Brazilian jungle (or in this case rather the moving of a ship across a mountain) [Fitzcarraldo], an empire of black Amazons in West Africa [Cobra Verde] - to name just a few of his better known films. And if possible, mythology is added - up to a point where myth is simply created. This is not only true of the ill-fated Green Ants Dreaming, but of the Sahara doco Fata Morgana as well, where myths by the ancient Greek and the Maya at the same time are superficially used to evoke a mysterious sci-fi atmosphere. Needless to say that such wonders can’t be found in present-day Germany. As they can’t be located in this highly industrialised country, Herzog for obvious reasons goes back all the way to more romantic times as in Kaspar Hauser or Nosferatu.

A closer look reveals that Herzog’s romanticism is rather personal - like the myths he creates. Some critics call this his “burden of dreams”, as Les Blank shows in his famous doco about the shooting of Fitzcarraldo. I would rather call this obsession. Herzog is simply obsessed by obsessions, be it his or others. This does not only allow for some extraordinary feature films but for documentaries as well, like The Flying Doctors of East Africa, The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner or The Dark Glow of Mountains (about Austrian mountain-addict Reinhold Messner). This obsession can even lead to a film about nothing happening, probably a unique achievment in film history. In La Soufrière, this volcano on a Caribbean island threatens total disaster by its eruption. But unsympathetic to Herzog’s eagerly waiting camera, the 'inevitable apocalypse' becomes abortive as the volcano simply calms down.

Closely related to obsession is vision. This is not only true of all founders of religion throughout history, but of film makers as well. Undoubtedly, Herzog produces by far the visually strongest images of all German directors. In fact, quite a few of his films are more or less like loose agglomerates around a central visionary image - the ship on the ridge in Fitzcarraldo is by far the most well-known example. And if you rely as much on images as Herzog does, a succession of images with magic beauty and without any plot whatsoever is a convincing piece of art - like Fata Morgana. There are always a few extremely strong images in our mind when we recall a Herzog film: the valley in Crete with its hundreds of rotating windmills in Signs of Life, the lilliputians forever driving round and round on a motorbike in Even Dwarfs Started Small, the camera circling the lonely Aguirre on his raft in the backwaters of the Amazon jungle.

Closely related to myth and vision is landscape (not to be confused with simple nature), another important feature of Herzog’s work. Its subtle depiction sets the mood of a film, often accompanied by the ethereal music of Popol Vuh. But step by step landscape is gradually transformed into a kind of mindscape of the lead character. Who almost always is an obsessed lunatic, a pathological outsider. A loser on a grand scale - a mythological loser. Simply Klaus Kinski, who was never near as good as when working with Herzog in their love-hate relationship. It is obvious why Herzog never changed his two cinematographers Thomas Mauch and Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein. Though it might be argued that the third continuing cooperation, that with editor Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus (since 1984, followed by her daughter [?] Maximiliane Mainka) may be an indication of an extremely conservative approach to filmmaking as well.

Despite its being produced at an early stage in his career, Aguirre for me is the quintessential Herzog movie. It has all the typical ingredients - Kinski as the maniac; extremely sensitive camerawork by Thomas Mauch (especially during the descent of the Andes); and music by Popul Vuh. It’s shot on a most unlikely location - the Peruvian rainforest near Puerto Maldonado, in the vicinity of which Fitzcarraldo was to be shot nearly 10 years later, and with more than just a little help from his friends, a handful of Latin-American filmmakers who also act in it. It deals with possibly the most obsessed group of people in history, the Spanish conquistadors, and their desperate hunt for the most magic of all Grails, the elusive golden land of El Dorado - leaving destruction and death to millions in their wake. A few lines in an old chronicle is all that remains of the historical facts, thus leaving plenty of room for Herzog to employ his imagination and re-arrange the facts. In short: an ideal topic for a visionary director, tackled with just the right crew, and created on a location guaranteed to make the shooting an ordeal in itself.

And an ordeal it was indeed. For much of the time, the location consisted of three differently-sized rafts slowly gliding down the head-waters of the mighty Amazon river: one for the action proper, a second to set up the camera on, and a third one, dangling a few miles behind so as not to be in frame, providing basic accommodation and meals. Scorching sun, high humidity and mosquitoes galore took their toll. At one point Kinski, forever true to his reputation, insisted on the fulfilment of his contract: if no air-con room at night, no work. With this luxury about 1,000 km away, Herzog saw only one chance to save his film: at gunpoint he threatened to kill Kinski and later explain his disappearance with an unfortunate incident in the perilous waters. As we all know, Kinski kept on working.

As always, Herzog was quick to take advantage of situations, especially as this was virtually a low-budget production. When they incidentally rafted by a burning tribal village, a short scene was included in the film. The monkeys for the second-last scene were simply stolen from a freight ship bound for the States, where the poor animals should have given their lives in labs for the benefit of new cosmetics and drugs. Though usually very eloquent, I never heard Herzog explain how he managed to get the big boat into the tree top - so at least this minor miracle remains unsolved.

Aguirre for me is the most convincing of Herzog’s films in terms of narrative as well. True, there is comparatively little dialogue. But this saves Herzog from getting too much tangled up in the construction of a plot, something German directors never are good at, as I already pointed out. Instead, the narrative is more or less a steady stream of images which not only sets the pace of the film but the mood as well. And as the river gets wider and likewise slower and calmer, so does the plot. It is the topography of the landscape that pushes the action, not the actors. They are, indeed, re-actors to their surroundings, which on the other hand reflect and mirror the growing madness and the feverish hallucinations of the doomed expedition. One more of the many cycles in Herzog’s films.

Where there is dialogue, it does not push the action but characterizes the protagonists - exactly what a good line of dialogue should always do but all too seldom does. A look at the very first scene with dialogue will clarify my point. We have seen the expedition descending the wild mountains, carrying unnecessary impedimenta and showing out-of-place behaviour. Now Aguirre stands at the river beside Gonzalo, brother of Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, and says: “Nobody can get down that river alive”. As we find out in the run of the film, this is a truly prophetic remark. But it proves as well that Aguirre at this point is still completely sane and pragmatic. A remarkable contrast to his later behaviour when he pushes forward with all his might. With no companions left and his dead daughter in his arms he hallucinates about founding the biggest empire ever, a Pure Dynasty built on an incestuous matrimony with just this daughter.

The first dialogue is even more crucial because of a pun in the German dialogue, not reflected in the English subtitles which read Pizarro continuing “From here its downhill” and Aguirre answering “Now its downhill”. In German, the exchange of words can be read in three different ways:
1) “From now on things are up and up”, and Aguirre replying “From now on it goes downhill”. 2) Pizarro: “From now on we have to move upwards” with Aguirre replying “From now on we will move downstream”. Or 3) the mixed combination “From now on things are up and up”, with Aguirre choosing to misunderstand by answering “From now on we will move downstream”. This makes it possible for him to show proper behaviour towards a Spanish nobleman but already hints at Aguirre’s barely hidden resistance to the expedition’s official goal and indicates his own, still secret plans.

I stress this scene for two reasons:
- the basics of Aguirre’s character as well as the outline of the plot are evident in just three laconic lines of dialogue - quite an artistic achievement;
- this dialogue has been made up by Herzog right on the spot during shooting. This can easily be proven by the published screenplay which does not contain them.

Herzog materialises as a masterly “auteur” - not only in control of the images but of the narrative as well. In fact, Herzog’s Aguirre has hardly anything in common with the historical person. Just as well, he differs totally from the positive portrayal in Latin-American literature as well as other films - a rather boring costume-drama could recently be seen on SBS. Aguirre is Herzog’s own creation, skilfully crafted and artistically absolutely convincing.

This film is Herzog’s day of reckoning with the age of the conquistadors. I can’t think of a more scathing exposure of greed and insanity as motivators of human behaviour barely disguised behind a fake missionary approach. The one-dimensional greediness of the Spaniards may still be comprehensible - the same greediness in the name of God, as portrayed by Dominican monk Gaspar de Carvajal, is not.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God to me seems the perfect film to celebrate 500 years of European colonisation of Latin America - and of the rest of the world, for that matter.