WERNER HERZOG

'Werner Herzog' (born 'Werner Stipetić' on September 5, 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.
He is often associated with the German New Wave movement (also called New German Cinema), along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders and others. His films often feature heroes with impossible dreams or people with unique talents in obscure fields.

Contents

Early life

Family

Films and criticism

Awards

Works

References

Further reading

External links

Early life

Herzog was born 'Werner Stipetić' (IPA pronunciation: ) in Munich. He adopted the name 'Herzog', which means "duke" in German, later in life. His mother was of Croatian descent and his father abandoned them early in Herzog's youth, when he returned from a prisoner of war camp after World War II.^[1] Werner Herzog on the Story Behind 'Rescue Dawn' His family moved to a remote village in Bavaria after the house next to theirs was destroyed during the bombing at the close of World War II. When he was 13 he and his family shared an apartment with Klaus Kinski in Elisabethstr in Munich-Schwabing. About this, Herzog recalled, "I knew at that moment that I would be a film director and that I would direct Kinski".
The same year, Herzog was told to sing in front of his class at school and he adamantly refused. He was almost expelled for this and until the age of 18 listened to no music, sang no songs and studied no instruments. He later said that he would easily give 10 years from his life to be able to play an instrument. At 14 he was inspired by an encyclopedia entry about film-making which he says provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a film-maker - that, and the 35mm camera that the young Herzog stole from the Munich Film School. He received his post-secondary education at the University of Munich and despite earning a scholarship to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania he supposedly dropped out in a matter of days and made his way to Mexico where he worked in a rodeo.
In the early 1960s Herzog worked night shifts as a welder in a steel factory to help fund his first films.

Family

Herzog has been married three times and has had three children. In 1967, Herzog married Martje Grohmann, with whom he had a son in 1973, Rudolph Amos Achmed. In 1980 his daughter Hanna Mattes was born to Eva Mattes. In 1987, Herzog married Christine Maria Ebenberger. Their son, Simon David Alexander Herzog, was born in 1989. In 1995 Herzog met photographer Lena Pisetski (now Herzog) and moved to the United States. They married in 1999 and now live in Los Angeles.

Films and criticism

Herzog's films have received considerable critical acclaim and achieved popularity on the art house circuit. They have also been the subject of controversy in regard to their themes and messages, especially the circumstances surrounding their creation. A notable example is ''Fitzcarraldo'', in which the obsessiveness of the central character was mirrored by the director during the making of the film. His treatment of subjects has been characterized as Wagnerian in its scope, as ''Fitzcarraldo'' and his later film ''Invincible'' (2001) are directly inspired by opera, or operatic themes. He is proud of never using storyboards and often improvising large parts of the script, as he explains on the commentary track to ''.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God - 1972

Herzog directed five films starring Klaus Kinski: ''Aguirre: The Wrath of God'', '', ''Woyzeck'', ''Fitzcarraldo'', and ''Cobra Verde''. In 1999 he directed and narrated the documentary film ''My Best Fiend'', a retrospective on his often rocky relationship with Kinski.
Other actors who appear repeatedly in Herzog films are:

★ Bruno S. in ''The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'' and ''Stroszek''

★ Eva Mattes in ''Woyzeck'' and ''Stroszek''

★ Clemens Scheitz in ''The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'', ''Heart of Glass'', ''Stroszek'' and ''Nosferatu the Vampyre''

★ José Lewgoy in ''Fitzcarraldo'' and ''Cobra Verde''

★ Brad Dourif in ''Scream of Stone'' and ''The Wild Blue Yonder''
Chickens (against which Herzog has a phobia) are a frequent leitmotif, appearing in:^[2]

★ ''Game in the Sand'' centers around a chicken

★ ''Signs of Life'' features a chicken buried up to its neck in a mound of sand

★ ''Signs of Life'' and ''The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'' feature chicken hypnosis

★ ''Even Dwarfs Started Small'' features cannibalistic chickens, and several sequences of dwarfs throwing chickens

★ ''Stroszek'' ends with a long shot of a dancing chicken

Awards

Herzog and his films have won and been nominated for many awards over the years. Most notably, Herzog won the best director award for ''Fitzcarraldo'' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.
''Grizzly Man'', directed by Herzog, won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
Herzog was honored at the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival, receiving the 2006 Film Society Directing Award. Four of his films have been shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival throughout the years: ''Herdsmen of the Sun'' in 1990, ''Bells from the Deep'' in 1993, ''Lessons of Darkness'' in 1993, and ''Wild Blue Yonder'' in 2006. Herzog's April of 2007 appearance at the Ebertfest in Champaign, IL earned him the Golden Thumb Award, and an engraved glockenspiel given to him by a young film maker inspired by his films.

Works

Main articles: List of Werner Herzog films

References

1. Bissell, Tom. "The Secret Mainstream: Contemplating the mirages of Werner Herzog". ''Harper's''. December 2006.
2. Werner Herzog audio commentary to DVD of ''Signs of Life''

Further reading

★ Paul Cronin. ''Herzog on Herzog'' (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 2002, ISBN 0571207081)

★ Werner Herzog. ''Eroberung des Nutzslosen'' (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-446-20457-1)
("Conquest of the Useless," Herzog's diaries of the making of ''Fitzcarraldo'' -- published in Italian as ''La Conquista dell'Inutile,'' English translation in preparation)

★ Descheneaux, A. Présence Wagnérienne dans le film Invincible (2001) de Werner Herzog in ''Canadian University Music Review'' 24:30–61 n1 2003

★ Herzog, Werner. ''Of Walking in Ice.'' Free Association. 2007.

External links

★ Official site

★

★ Extracts from ''Herzog on Herzog''

★ The Werner Herzog Archive

★ ''Senses Of Cinema'' on Werner Herzog

★ Werner Herzog interviewed at NYPL (2007)

★ The Onion interview (2007)

★ PopMatters interview (2005)

★ Roger Ebert interviews Werner Herzog (2005)

★ Henry Rollins interviews Werner Herzog

★ Doug Aitken Werner Herzog interview (2004)

★ BBC interview (2003)

★ indieWIRE interview