Werner Herzog - A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

by Paul Cronin

  The reception honouring the prizewinner was where I first met Werner and his wife Lena. They walked in the door together, hand in hand, seeming larger than life, and at the same time as if they were prepared to endure the event for the sake of the film, and then escape as quickly as politeness could allow. But my biggest surprise was the discovery that Werner was not the old man I had expected. All the time I had been watching his films while a graduate student and young postdoc he was not that much older than I was, and had already established his reputation as one of the most prolific, energetic and inventive filmmakers on any continent. He had done all this while I had taken the easy and traditional route towards a PhD and an academic career. So much for having felt so full of myself at the time.

  I have since been privileged to spend many hours with Werner. On one occasion he encouraged me to skip a physics meeting at Caltech to be a guest speaker at his highly coveted Rogue Film School, where he interviewed me about what it might be like to film in four dimensions. In turn, Werner was my guest at an Arizona State University Origins Project event, where we screened his 3D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and later had an on-stage discussion about early modern humans with one of the world’s leading palaeontologists. Werner had earlier explained to me, as only he could, without an ounce of inappropriate vanity, that it was the first film that really required 3D filming. As he described it, the detailed Palaeolithic cave paintings, which the film focused on, incorporated the curvature and shape of the walls to embellish the animal figures. Without 3D, that feature would have been completely lost. To achieve this Werner had built his own cameras and reassembled them on the spot, all while restricted to a thin metal railing in the dark, inside a cave in which fewer people have stepped than have walked on the moon, with just six days to film the entire project. I have often insisted to Werner that it seems he doesn’t like to make a film unless it is difficult, but he insists equally strongly that this is nonsense.

  Werner is a genius. I say this without intending hyperbole. I have worked with some very talented people in my own field, including numerous Nobel Laureates, but I would call only a few of these colleagues geniuses. It is not a matter of intelligence alone. It is the ability to create, out of thin air, stories, explanations and images in ways that could not have been anticipated by others. Often, when presented with a completed work – for example, Einstein’s special relativity – it’s possible to imagine how, if one had had the initial idea, one could have puzzled through to the end. Yet for some creations – like those of Newton, for example – the road from beginning to end seems as remarkable after the fact as before it. I feel that way when I talk to Werner, listen to his plans and watch the end results.

  Ultimately, the Werner Herzog I have come to know is not the wild man of his press clippings. He is a caring, thoughtful, playful and essentially gentle human being. Possessing a restless mind, with a fertile and creative imagination, he is a man interested in all aspects of the human experience. Self-taught, he is widely read and deeply knowledgeable. I like to think that one of the reasons we enjoy each other’s company is that we both share a deep excitement in the human experience. I particularly enjoy listening to the childlike wonder with which he expresses his insights and ideas, something many other people lose early on. In this sense, I think that if Werner had chosen a different road to travel, he could easily have been a scientist – an experimental one, I am certain, because of his desire to experience directly the phenomena he imagines – and his career might easily have taken him to the wilds of the Amazon or the Antarctic end of the world. Maybe in a parallel universe that is precisely what he is doing. I only hope that in that universe I am making films. At the same time Werner possesses attributes I can only admire and wish I shared, including deep bravery. He is fascinated by the dark side of life, and recognises the universe is a deeply inhospitable place, and that to imagine otherwise is foolishness. But he runs headlong into the fray to capture every aspect of this universe that he can on film. He is not foolhardy. He always knows what the possible consequences are, but he finds a way to do it anyway.

  Werner has a unique way of answering questions, without pretence or worries about the possible reception of his words. He speaks his mind directly and to the point. Moreover, without being cloying in any way, in conversation he reveals the unexpected challenges and sometimes completely fortuitous circumstances that colour the end results, and that have resulted in some of the most remarkable films of the last century. I think a particularly illuminating aspect of the real Werner was on display during the same weekend we screened his 3D film in Arizona. In what was the most amazing hour of radio I have ever participated in, Werner joined me and another friend, the remarkable writer Cormac McCarthy, along with Science Friday host Ira Flatow, to talk about early modern humans, their culture and technology. I will never forget as these two icons discussed the science in detail and with authority, demonstrating to everyone that to be cultured in the modern world doesn’t mean shying away from science, and moreover that you don’t have to be a scientist either to be interested in the natural world or to gain some expertise. The programme ended with Werner reading aloud from McCarthy’s novel All the Pretty Horses. It was a magical moment, and a magical connection between two creative artists willing to explore sides of the world that many would otherwise be glad to pretend don’t exist.

  Lawrence Krauss is Foundation Professor of Physics in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and Director of the Origins Project. His books include Fear of Physics, The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. In 2012 he was awarded the National Science Board Public Service Award and Medal.

  Bibliographic Essay

  The primary focus of this short essay – merely a starting point for those studying Herzog’s work – is Werner’s own output. Those seeking more detailed information on the reviews, articles, chapters, doctoral theses and other ephemera about Herzog’s life and work are encouraged to access his official website (http://www.wernerherzog.com) for Professor Herbert Golder’s expansive (though by now somewhat out of date) bibliography. Several of the academic titles mentioned below also contain substantial bibliographies.

  Herzog’s own publishing house Skellig produced two volumes of his prose screenplays (in German) in 1977. Volume one contains Lebenszeichen, Auch Zwerge haben klein augefangen, Fata Morgana; volume two (also published in English by Tanam, in 1980) contains Aguirre, Der Zorn Gottes, Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit. Over the years Carl Hanser Verlag has published several Herzog scripts in German: Stroszek and Nosferatu (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982; also Knaur, 1982), Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen (1984) and Cobra Verde (1987). In 1987 Verlag Volk und Welt issued Fitzcarraldo and Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen together in one volume. Cobra Verde Filmbuch was published by 1987 by Edition Stemmle and contains a German translation of Bruce Chatwin’s essay “History in the Making,” Herzog’s short piece about the background to the film (“Die Geschichte des Films”), the transcript of Steff Gruber’s interview recorded during production, nearly eighty pages of Beat Presser’s colour photographs of the film, and several pages of his black-and-white production shots.

  There exist several books of Herzog’s screenplays in other languages, notably French. L’Avant-scène cinéma published L’énigme de Kaspar Hauser in 1976 and Aguirre, la colère de dieu in 1978. In 1981 Hachette P.O.L. Issued Scénarios, which contains Signes de vie, Les nains aussi ont commencé petits, Fata Morgana and Aguirre, la colère de Dieu. Le pays où rêvent les fourmis vertes was released by P.O.L in 1985, and Cobra Verde by Jade-Flammarion in 1988. Two Herzog volumes have appeared in Italian (La ballata di Stroszek and Nosferatu, il principe della notte, Ubulibri, 1982; and Fitzcarraldo, Guanda, 1982) and one in Spanish (Kaspar Hauser, Elias Querejeta Ediciones, 1976). Cobra Verde was translated into Catalan and published in 1988 by Laia Libros.

  Heart of Glass (S
kellig) was published in 1976, and contains Herzog and Herbert Achternbusch’s prose script of the film, intercut with Alan Greenberg’s interviews with Herzog and his thoughts compiled on the set of the film. The book is an important, early representation of several of the ideas in Herzog on Herzog. Greenberg issued a slightly different version of the book in 2012 as Every Night the Trees Disappear: Werner Herzog and the Making of Heart of Glass (Chicago Review Press), with colour photographs. Paul Monette’s novelisation of Nosferatu, based on Herzog’s script, was published in 1979 (UK: Picador; US: Avon), and in 2004 the British Film Institute published S. S. Prawer’s monograph on Nosferatu in its Modern Film Classics series (reissued in 2013 with an introduction by Brad Prager).

  Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo has spawned several books. The English edition of his original script (which differs substantially from the completed film, it being the basis of the original Robards/Jagger version) was published by Fjord Press, the Dutch by Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, the Italian by Guanda, the Polish by Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, and the French, alongside Nosferatu and La Ballade de Bruno (Stroszek), by Mazarine (all 1982).

  The Greek edition, published by θεμελιο, followed in 1984. Schirmer/ Mosel published Fitzcarraldo Filmbuch the same year, which contains a foreword by Herzog and the dialogue transcript (both in German), followed by more than a hundred pages of colour still frames taken from the film. The volume also includes ten pages of extracts from Herzog’s diaries written during production. In 2004 Herzog published these journals in full as Eroberung des Nutzlosen (Carl Hanser Verlag). Various foreign editions exist, including Italian (La conquista dell’inutile, Oscar Mondadori, 2007), French (Conquête de l’inutile, Capricci, 2008), English (Conquest of the Useless, HarperCollins, 2009) and Spanish (Conquista de lo inútil, Blackie, 2010). Short extracts from Herzog’s jungle diaries also appear in Burden of Dreams (North Atlantic Books, 1984), edited by Les Blank and James Bogan, a book that contains a collection of journal extracts by Blank and his fellow filmmaker Maureen Gosling written on the set of Fitzcarraldo, as well as reviews and photographs, plus a dialogue transcript of the film Burden of Dreams. (Blank’s film was issued on DVD in 2005 by the Criterion Collection, a release which also contains his 1980 short Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe and an eighty-page booklet with edited extracts from the Blank/Gosling journals. Herzog, alongside Blank and Gosling, contributed a commentary to the release, as well as a thirty-eight-minute filmed interview.) The booklet Der Fall Herzog is a partisan collection of documents and essays about the production of Fitzcarraldo, edited by Nina Gladitz. Gerhard Kaiser’s Fitzcarraldo Faust, a monograph on Fitzcarraldo (Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung), was published in 1993.

  Herzog’s prose book Of Walking in Ice was first published by Carl Hanser Verlag in 1978 (reprinted 1995, then re-released by Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag in 2009 and Hanser in 2012). The English translation followed in 1980 (Tanam) and was reprinted by Jonathan Cape (UK) in 1991 and Free Association (US) in 2007. The French edition, entitled Sur le chemin des glaces (Hachette), was published in 1979 (re-released by Editions Payot & Rivages in 1996), and Italian (Sentieri nel ghiaccio, Guanda), Japanese (Orion Literary Agency) and Swedish (Att gå kylan, Norstedt) translations appeared in 1980. A Dutch edition (Over een Voettocht door de Kou, Uitgeverij Bert Bakker) appeared in 1981 (re issued 2006 by Prometheus). A Spanish edition (Del caminar sobre hielo, Muchnik/Alphaville) was published in 1981 and re-released by Tempestad in 2003. The Brazilian edition (Caminhando no gelo, Paz e Terra) was issued in 1982 (reissued by Tinta-da-China in 2011), the Finnish (Jäinen matka, Like) in 1990 and Danish (Om at gå I is og sne, C&K Verlag) in 2014. An audio recording of the original German text, read by Herzog, was released on CD in 2007 by Winter & Winter.

  Herzog has published a small number of articles, essays and reviews over the decades, and a fairly comprehensive list can be found on his website. These include two articles from 1964: “Rebellen in Amerika” and a review of Mikhail Romm’s 1962 film Nine Days of One Year, both published in German film magazine Filmstudio. In 1968 Herzog wrote a short piece that also appeared in Filmstudio called “Mit den Wölfen Heulen,” about the politics of the German film industry and his refusal to allow his short film Last Words “to be used as a political instrument” at the Oberhausen Film Festival (this article is quoted from in the essay “Visionary Vehemence” above). He wrote reviews of the Taviani brothers’ film Padre Padrone (see page 68) and Peter Schneider’s book Der Mauerspringer in 1978 and 1982 respectively. In 1986 Herzog published a magazine article about ski flying in Der Spiegel, and four years later one about the Wodaabe in Stern. He wrote the foreword to his wife Lena’s book Pilgrims, describing the environment in which he filmed Wheel of Time, and in his foreword to Lena’s volume of photographs shot on the set of Bad Lieutenant (Universe, 2009) offers a vivid, brief account of the film’s production. His review of Wolfgang Buscher’s book Berlin–Moskau: Eine Reise zu Fuss (“a journey on foot”) appeared in 2003. Herzog published two articles – one long, one short – in Arion, A Journal of Humanities and the Classics in 2010 and 2012. The first, which can be found on both the Arion and official Herzog websites, is entitled “On the Absolute, the Sublime and Ecstatic Truth.” The second is “On Pope Benedict’s Address to the Bundestag.”

  Other miscellany worth mentioning are Und die Fremde ist der Tod (MaasMedia, 2004), a dual-language book of “Excerpts and Drawings by Bruno S,” and Miron Zownir’s film about Bruno, Die Fremde ist der Tod (2003). Beat Presser’s book of photographs Werner Herzog (Jovis, 2002) contains production shots taken on the sets of Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde and Invincible, as well as photographs taken during the staging of two operas in the mid-eighties. (The book also includes the testimonies of several Herzog collaborators over the years, including Volker Schlöndorff and Herbert Achternbusch.) A summary of Herzog’s work up until 1978 was issued by Filmverlag Autoren. Entitled simply Werner Herzog, it’s a useful collection of approximately a hundred pages, and includes articles, interviews, reviews and photographs. Herzog’s translation of Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems was published by Carl Hanser Verlag in 1997, and again by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag in 1999.

  Herzog has never been shy about talking to the world’s media, especially if doing so will help sell his films to the public. There are three lengthy interviews of note. Andrea Rost edited Werner Herzog in Bamberg: Protokoll einer Diskussion, a conversation in German from 1985. Grazia Paganeli’s interview, originally conducted in English, appears in Italian in her book Segni di vita: Werner Herzog e il cinema, an illustrated catalogue published in 2008 by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema to celebrate a retrospective of Herzog’s work. (The book includes a number of critical essays, alongside a selection of photographs from Herzog’s archive, and was also issued in Portuguese and Greek by, respectively, IndieLisboa and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.) In 2008 Manuel de survie: entretien avec Werner Herzog, a short interview book by Emmanuel Burdeau and Hervé Aubron, appeared in French (a Spanish translation was released in 2013). A collection of previously published interviews with Herzog, edited by Eric Ames, appeared in 2014, released by the University Press of Mississippi. The first iteration of this book (2002, as Herzog on Herzog) has been published in numerous foreign-language editions.

  Herzog has by now been fully integrated into the cross-currents of university departments and presses worldwide, and several of the following books are full of impeccable academic prose. Timothy Corrigan’s Between Mirage and History, The Films of Werner Herzog (Methuen, 1986) contains eleven essays about the films, and was for many years the only fulllength study in English. Two books in English – Brad Prager’s The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth (Wallflower, 2007) and Eric Ames’s Ferocious Reality: Documentary According to Werner Herzog (University of Minnesota, 2012) – have appeared more recently. Prager also edited a six-hundred-page collection of essays entitled A Companion to Werner Herzog (Wile
y-Blackwell, 2012). In German, Chris Wahl’s Lektionen in Herzog: Neues über Deutschlands verlorenen Filmautor und sein Werk (Text und Kritik, 2011) is an assembly of essays about Herzog’s reception in Germany, Italy, France and the United States. There are three full-length studies of the films in French: Emmanuel Carrère’s Werner Herzog (Edilig, 1982), Radu Gabrea’s Werner Herzog et la mystique rhénane (L’Age d’Homme, 1986) and Valérie Carré’s La quête anthropologique de Werner Herzog: documentaires et fictions en regard (Press Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2007). There are two studies in Italian, one by Paolo Sirianni (Scambio Editrice, 1980), the other by Fabrizio Grosoli (La Nova Italia, 1981), and one in Hungarian by Muhi Klára and Perlaki Tamás (Mùzsák Közmüvelödési Kiadó, 1986). Lucia Nagib’s 1991 book Werner Herzog: O cinema como realidade was published in Portuguese and includes a twenty-four-page interview. Antonio Weinrichter’s Caminar sobre hielo y fuego: los documentales de Werner Herzog appeared in 2007. In 1979 Carl Hanser Verlag published Werner Herzog, which contains a lengthy interview in German and commentaries on the films (up to Woyzeck). The relevant chapters in the same publisher’s Herzog/Kluge/Straub (1976) are similarly structured. Postscript: Essays in Film and the Humanities (Jacksonville University and Georgia Institute of Technology) devoted much of its summer 1988 issue to Herzog’s films. The German magazine Film-dienst published several articles about Herzog’s documentaries in its summer 2010 issue. Moritz Holdfelder’s “unauthorised” biography of Herzog was published in German (LangenMüller) in 2012. While Holdfelder did not interview the subject of his book or have access to Herzog’s archive, he did conduct interviews with several of Herzog’s collaborators, including Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein, Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus, Eva Mattes and Alexander Kluge.