Anamirl watches him.
HIAS
When night falls, vision dies. Many things come to pass. But the rain never falls upward.
Hias has finished and leaves without a word. He closes the door behind him.
From inside, the door.
MANSION
The dining room.
A large table with eight chairs around it. The factory owner sits at the head of the table. All the other chairs are empty, except one. There still sits the glassblower Wenzel, with his heavy leather apron, and a heavy, shiny glove beside his plate. He doesn’t get on very well with his knife and fork and is embarrassed. Apparently he was invited as a special favor and has been pressed to eat dinner at the table. As the factory owner has finished, Wenzel pretends to have finished, too, although his plate is half filled. The factory owner stretches in his chair in a kind of euphoria. He wipes his mouth with a napkin. Wenzel copies him.
Ludmilla nimbly puts the china on the platter. It is very elegant china, almost royal, much like the room’s furniture.
FACTORY OWNER
Your prayer has caused a miracle. An hour ago I learned something I never knew before: I can sell my secret to every glass factory.
Ludmilla drops something. She is very distracted.
FACTORY OWNER
Break as much as you can. I am going to let ten racks of Ruby glass be carried up Mount Arber and have it thrown into the lake so the water turns red. Adalbert! Did my servant get that?
Adalbert steps up to the dining table with a notebook and pencil.
ANAMIRL’S HOUSE
The door of Anamirl’s living room inside.
Rumbling.
The door opens from outside, and two workmen carry in Anamirl’s davenport. Anamirl appears and swiftly removes a chair. They put the davenport in its proper place.
WORKMAN
There, Anamirl, now you can sit softly again.
The second one counts ten florins on the table.
SECOND WORKMAN
If you need more money sometime, we’ll fetch the davenport again for the master to poke a hole in, and he’ll give you another ten florins.
The two men exit.
Anamirl fetches a little tablecloth from under her bench to put on the spot where the davenport has been opened up. She smoothes it over, then leaves through the door.
It is dark in the hallway. She opens the front door. The sunlight floods in. Anamirl goes out and is forced to sneeze.
Ten men pass by; we see them from the front door, each carrying a rack filled with glass on his back. They pass with weighty, stamping steps, like a death ballet. Against the light, they are like an engraving. Not a word is uttered.
MANSION
Ludmilla is standing behind a lower window of the kitchen. We see Hias walk toward her from the orchard. Ludmilla opens the window.
LUDMILLA
The master’s out of order.
HIAS
In the factory he’s been Beelzebub.
Ludmilla instinctively makes the sign of the cross.
HIAS
He sent ten men with racks of glass into the woods. But since they are not stupid enough to throw the valuable glass into the lake, they’ll smuggle it over the border and sell it. Ludmilla, leave before he imposes his will on you.
From the background we hear the voice of Adalbert.
ADALBERT
Ludmilla, dress up by five o’clock. The master desires your company.
LUDMILLA
(frightened) Hias!
Adalbert appears beside Ludmilla at the window.
ADALBERT
I have to take care of the music.
HIAS
There will be someone coming up the path who can play the radleier, the hurdy-gurdy.
ADALBERT
I’d have to sing to the radleier.
HIAS
Harp Toni is sitting in the inn.
ADALBERT
Tell him to come. It won’t do him any harm.
Ludmilla hesitatingly withdraws from the window into the interior of the kitchen.
Hias crosses the orchard to the gravel path, where a stranger with a bundle awaits him. Under the trees, great quantities of apples have not been collected. They ferment. Hias leaves with the stranger.
MANSION
It is a completely frenzied sleepwalking scene, which has a stranger effect due to the somnambulistic harp music.
The factory owner sits in his easy chair, arms resting on the armrests, and is fully carried away. Toni plays a fantasy on the harp.
Ludmilla sits on a stool in the middle of the room like a calf. Adalbert is standing by the door.
The factory owner rises. Toni shuts his eyes and plays. Ludmilla keeps her hands in her lap, as if she were cold.
Adalbert remains inscrutable. The factory owner steps to the fireplace behind his chair and gazes into the fire. Adalbert closes the door of the adjoining room behind Toni.
Ludmilla is weeping.
Adalbert takes his place by the door.
The factory owner walks over to the sword on the wall beside the chimney.
The harp ripples. Ludmilla weeps loudly into her hands. A painting drops from the wall.
Toni looks up.
Adalbert takes the picture and leans it against the wall.
Ludmilla jumps up and runs to the door.
Adalbert removes the key and steps inside. Ludmilla tugs at the handle. The factory owner examines the sword’s blade with his thumb.
The row of ancestors, among them the empty space of the fallen painting.
Ludmilla screams. Toni stops playing.
The factory owner draws the sword from its sheath.
Toni resumes playing.
Adalbert plays with the door key, as he isn’t sure whether to put it back in the lock to open it, or not.
SACHRANG
I was driving to Herzog’s house in Munich before departing for the next location in Sachrang, where Herzog grew up. Beside me sat Elizabeth Herzog, the filmmaker’s mother. I asked for her recollections of Herzog as a boy.
“When he was young, Werner was always, always in a rage. It was so frightening to see him. Nobody knew why he was like that; it was simply his nature. He would be just the sweetest boy, and then suddenly he would catch fire.
“Werner never had a truly close friend. He did have playmates—and usually ran around with them—but never a real friend. He could not make contact with another person. That is why he makes his films.
“When he was in school, Werner never learned anything there. He never read the books he was supposed to read; he never studied; he never knew what he was supposed to know, it seemed. But in reality, Werner always knew everything. His senses were remarkable. If he heard the slightest sound, ten years later he would remember it precisely; he would talk about it and maybe use it in some way. But he was absolutely unable to explain anything. He knows, he sees, he understands, but he cannot explain. That is not his nature. Everything goes into him. If it comes out, it comes out transformed.
“At the age of fifteen, Werner converted to Catholicism. He did this entirely on his own. He had never been baptized, had never been raised in a formal religious atmosphere. He converted to Catholicism, I think, because the priest played football.
“Werner cannot bear to see people who are sick, who are suffering. It terrifies him. The thought of death makes him so compassionate. It makes him fight.
“Oh, yes—as a boy he had some strange habits. He used to always sit alone in his room, for hours, always with the door closed. At times I would look in, and I’d find him staring at a single object, the same object all day long.”
I left Mrs. Herzog at her son’s home. Then, with Martje and her three-year-old boy, Burro, I left Munich for the little village of Sachrang, about ninety kilometers away. The Herzogs’ son was exceptionally good-looking, with fine blond hair, deep and inquisitive eyes, and an angelic aura. He bore a slight congenital defect in his ches
t that was common to the Herzog lineage, and Martje called him “lopsided.” The child’s full name was Rudolph Amos Achmed Herzog, a combination which, Herzog once pointed out, is of Jewish, Arab, and German derivation. He called the boy Burro because of his nature.
As the car sped over the autobahn not far from our destination, Martje exclaimed to her son, “We’re going to see Papa, Burro!”
To which Burro responded, “Which one?”
We reached the location in Sachrang, which was a small bungalow off the country road in view of the Austrian Alps thirty kilometers away. Herzog told me that the house belonged to an old friend and neighbor of the family. Then he explained that the Herzogs fled to Sachrang from Munich during World War II because of the ugly political climate in Munich. So he spent his first eleven years in the beautiful, tranquil countryside, a part of his life which, Herzog went on to say, was a most happy one and remains with him in a profound way.
Before the shooting began, Herzog showed me around the bungalow and its land to the rear. He first showed me the kitchen. It was cramped, tiny, and extremely old-fashioned, with a wood-burning stove, rough wooden furniture, and an anachronistic water pump. Herzog said the kitchen was exactly like the one in his boyhood home. Then we walked to the backyard. Herzog reminisced.
“As a boy I was part of the local gang. We invented things. We invented, for example, a sort of flay arrow that we threw with a kind of whip. And we could fling that arrow about four hundred meters. Just think of it—incredible. We were very inventive. But I was a difficult member of this group, because I was very much alone in my early childhood. I was quite silent, and I wouldn’t speak for days. My parents thought I was insane or retarded. I was very dangerous, and my character was peculiar. It was almost as if I had rabies.”
Then Herzog was asked how much his childhood had affected him in his work. He indicated that his experiences as a boy had stayed with him quite a lot and could be seen easily in Heart of Glass.
“Stories like Heart of Glass were always told where I grew up,” he reflected. “There were mythological heroes that we had and idols that were present in the village. Some lumberjacks who were very strong and had brawls in the bar—they were our heroes, the strongest ones.
“Beyond that there was a mythical waterfall in a ravine behind the house. And, on our way to school in the village, we had to pass a haunted forest. We thought witches were in there. Still, when I pass there today, I get the feeling that there was something different about that forest.”
The morning’s shooting first took place outside the house, where a scene ensued with Mother Anamirl standing at the door, entranced, as Hias arrives, and then inside the little sitting room where Anamirl is visited by Hias, then by the four workmen who return her damaged davenport. The interior work was particularly difficult because of the limited space available. The cameramen were forced to climb the walls in order to operate the camera. Then an additional problem arose when the soundman, Haymo, noticed that the vibration of the camera’s motor was being amplified by the old planks that stretched over the floor. After much experimentation, a few winter coats fixed that.
Hias’s scene went without trouble. His task was to munch on some bread, then press it along the broken edge of a piece of pottery to glue it back together. As is always the case with a Herzog image, the action unfolded with the awkward ease of slow silence, the pace that neglects nothing. But Herzog found this scene too slow for his own liking, so he eliminated the pottery repair, instead having Hias cut and chew on the piece of bread only.
The davenport scene was more difficult, due to the unwieldiness of the sofa for one thing, and because Herzog had to work with five hypnotized actors, giving the workmen their entrance clues through a closed door within the cluttered room, for another. Several takes were needed to complete this scene, with Herzog carrying the heavy old davenport himself back outside after each take.
On lunch break, I drove to a restaurant a mile from the set with a young man named Henning von Gierke, who was the chief set designer for Heart of Glass. Henning had first worked for Herzog on the Kaspar Hauser film, and his interior decor in that picture won him considerable acclaim and some prestigious awards. He was in fact a serious artist, a painter, whose works had been exhibited in galleries throughout Germany. He lacked any real background for the services he was providing to Herzog. Once I visited Henning’s Munich studio, and there I saw the image of a row of softly billowing trees, with slender strands descending from the top of each one, almost imperceptibly.
Over lunch, Henning admitted to an uneasy feeling about the production. He felt that the picture itself would be superb, perhaps superior to Every Man for Himself and God Against All, but he was disturbed by something else.
“Herzog must beware,” Henning began. “The making of his films has always been private, almost secret. He would gather together his friends and make the most incredible films in the world. But now he is becoming world famous, and people from the outside are getting in. Herzog must guard himself. He must not stray. Or else, like the Americans, he’ll become abstract.”
After lunch, Herzog and I took a stroll down the road away from the film set. As a boy in Sachrang, Herzog mentioned that he used to spend a lot of time inside a wee chapel not far from his home, and he suggested that we walk over to it.
“When I was eighteen, I wanted to go to Albania,” recollected Herzog along the roadside. “But I never made it. I walked round the border of Albania after hitching to Greece with some friends, walking along the border in a province inhabited by Greeks. That was the first time when I really started out. The second step was when I became a Catholic. I did so against the fierce opposition of my father, who almost lost his mind when he heard about it.
“I had a true alternative of commitment at the time—I could have been a Protestant, or something else. It was my own choice, with no influences. I was never baptized. I had a very profound religious feeling at the time, a strong religious need. I took it very, very seriously. I mention it as being independent in thinking because I came to think, Why do I become a Catholic? Why not a Protestant? And I knew at the time, at the age of fourteen, I knew precisely that there were many disadvantages, like the Church hierarchy, like the dogmas and other things. And against this knowledge, I decided to become a Catholic. One of the main reasons for doing this was the unbroken tradition in the Church. I understood quite well back then that religion has to do with rituals.
“All of this didn’t last very long. It was over in a couple of years. The result of all that is obvious to me. Since I had become so deeply involved in religion, I have become much more violently against it.”
The two of us reached the tiny chapel and approached it, walking through a gate and up a hill. When Herzog tried the door, it was locked. He said that the chapel was always open, and he tried the other entrance. It too was locked. Just as we were about to give up, a back door was found open, and soon we were inside the little space, contemplating an ornate shrine, countless paintings of religious scenes hanging high and low, a few rows of pews, and white, unlit tapers. Herzog looked about for a minute, then walked out.
Back at the bungalow, Herzog stopped me in a narrow hallway inside. He picked up the miniature woolen jacket that his boy, Burro, had left on top of a wooden chest. Herzog pondered it, confused.
“I’ve told my son to call me ‘Herzog’—I don’t really think I’ve accepted him yet as my son. He’s my friend. ‘My little friend’—that’s what I always call him. You know, it never occurred to me to have a child. Then one day my good friend from New York, Amos Vogel, said to me, ‘Werner, you must have a son.’ So for the first time I thought about such a thing, and within a year my son was born.”
He paused to further contemplate the empty little jacket. He shook his head. “Shit,” Herzog muttered. “For a long while after Burro was born, it was difficult for me—I had no idea who or what he was. And now I look at this. What fits into such a thing? What is it? I ju
st can’t understand.”
The last scene at Sachrang would depict ten workers walking along with loads of red glass on their backs. Herzog himself decided to be in this scene. He also selected van Anft; the stills photographer, Gunther; Joschi; the psychoanalyst, Claude; and me, reducing the number of workmen to six. The costume women outfitted all of us, and much attention was paid to the transformation of van Anft, whose guise exposed him as the true leprechaun that Herzog insisted he was. Herzog himself provoked similar comments, if not laughter, when he donned his two pairs of raggedy pants, an old homespun shirt, tall hiking boots, a tight-fitting jacket, and a little hat.
“That costume certainly brings out the Bavarian in him,” remarked Herzog’s wife, Martje. “You are looking at the real Werner Herzog now.”
The Dutchman, the Hungarian, the Frenchman, the American, the German, and the Bavarian strapped on their racks of red glass, and we set ourselves in place atop a rise beside the roadway. I complained that my glass globules weren’t tinkling enough, but nothing could be done. After a couple of trials, the six men were ready. Haymo switched on his machine, the camera rolled, and the workmen trudged ahead, along the horizon and into Oblivion, with their tinkling globes of Ruby glass.
“This is our monument,” Herzog whispered to me.
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