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Politics and the primal eye: Four films by Werner Herzog

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Politics and the primal eye: Four films by Werner Herzog

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Content POLITICS AND THE PRIMAL EYE: FOUR FILMS BY WERNER HERZOG by Robert Mercer Payne A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (Cinema-Television) May 1987 UMI Number: EP42945 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI EP42945 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQ uest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United S tates Code ProQ uest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 -1 3 4 6 UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CALIFORNIA TH E GRADUATE SC H O O L , U NIVERSITY PARK C. f /1 LO S A N G ELES. CA LIFO R N IA 9 0 0 0 7 o7 P3^ This thesis, written by Robert Mercer Payne under the direction of h.2-.S..Thesis Committee, and approved by all its members, has been pre sented to and accepted by the Dean of The Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Ar Dean D ate..F 3kf.}^J.Y.. 2 5 , 19?.Z THESIS COMMITTEE Chairman ii For ray mother and father iii Acknowledgements An auteur, whether of a film or of a thesis, never works alone. First, I must thank Dr. Marsha Kinder, whose comments and encouragement fostered this project from its inception. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Beverle Houston and Dr. Michael Renov for adding their insight to these pages. For contributing towards the completion of this thesis, I would like to thank Dr. Allan Casebier, Owen Costello, Grigoris Daskalogrigorakis , Rene Kirby, Edward Noeltner, Joseph Osmann, Wayne Rothschild, Dr. Gaylyn Studlar, and especially Karl Rathcke. And I would like to acknowledge Dale Gelineau, Paul and Chris Wright, Christopher Stapleton, Helen Vo-Dinh, Rae Allen, Bibi Besch, Tony and Marsha Cifarelli, and all my friends for making the long hours of writing bearable. One does not live by scholarship alone. iv Table of Contents Introduction ................................................ 1 I. Life S i g n s ..............................................19 II. The Persistence of V i s i o n ..........................39 III. The Treason of Images..............................63 IV. The Mirage................................................110 Conclusion..................................................138 Bibliography ........................................149 Appendix: Filmography ................................ 153 1 Introduction Werner Herzog remains the New German Cinema's most problematic figure. In a film movement that seeks to create an active spectator, this West German director appears to perpetuate cinematic mystification through images and stories that defy rational assessment. Herzog would be conveniently severed from the movement were it not for his popularity among New German Cinema audiences. However, even the more demanding critics also acknowledge (sometimes begrudgingly) that his films do not simply elicit the audience's uncritical complacency, but instead question one's own expectations and perceptions of cinema. Herzog's so-called mystification, then, carries its own means of spectator activity. By examining issues raised by four of Herzog's films, these pages seek to reconcile their director with the more purposefully political and intellectual ambitions of New German Cinema. Herzog was one of the first West German filmmakers to attract international attention. The screening of his first feature, Signs of Life (Lebens.zeichen) , at the New York Film Festival in 1968 helped pave the way for further critical reception to works from the alleged cinematic wasteland. The film was also mentioned in Lotte Eisner's seminal study of German Expressionist cinema, The Haunted 2 Screen, for helping to "spell a new departure for German cinema."* The movement that came to be known as New German Cinema is indebted to Herzog no less than it is to the handful of his colleagues— Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, Volker Schlondorff, Johannes Schaaf, and Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet— who first forced foreign critics to acknowledge the West German film movement as the most important to come out of any individual country in the 1970s . After Herzog and the others established critical reception, dozens of new West German directors found access to a medium that could voice both their discontents and their hopes for a more progressive society. Through their films, Wim Wenders, Hans-Jiirgen Syberberg, Margarethe von Trotta, Werner Schroeter, Helke Sander, Helma Sanders- Brahms, and especially Rainer Werner Fassbinder— to mention only a few— were able to tap an intellectual consciousness that questioned many social and artistic assumptions. This consciousness has not always been shared by foreign film critics, who frequently determine perceptions of West German film abroad: In West Germany, one concentrates on the totality from which a film issues and measures a film's * Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, trans. Roger Greaves (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1969), p. 341 . "3 success in terms of its ability to reflect a larger social entity. American commentators tend not to care about how versimiltudinous Young German films have been. They focus instead on the unique world and singular visions presented by these individual directors. . . . Typically, one lauds the idiosyncratic way in which these enfants terribles construct fictional spaces, praising their "emphasis on^color and style— in effect, how a movie looks." Foreign attention to only a few West German directors (usually Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, Schlondorff, Syberberg, and Straub and Huillet) has fostered an exclusive pantheon of new auteurs. This reaction ignores both the post-auteurist issues raised by New German Cinema and the many other filmmakers in West Germany exploring topics no less vital. Not surprisingly, some resentment has been directed against these directors from those who feel that such disproportionate critical attention is endangering the differences and possibilities that make a 3 national film practice worthwhile. But where many of these acclaimed directors have disavowed the heroic individualism of the politique des auteurs through through the open discourses of their films and writings, Herzog has revelled in it, preferring to see 2 Eric Rentschler, "American Friends and New German Cinema: Patterns of Reception," New German Critique, Nos. 24/25 (Fall Winter 1981-82), p. 13; revised and reprinted in Rentschier's West German Film in the Course of Time (Bedford Hills, N. Y.: Redgrave, 1984), p. 70. 3 Timothy Corrigan, New German Film: The Displaced Image (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1983), p. 175. _ I _ himself as the visionary medieval mystic among his analytical, Angst-ridden countrymen. Instead of joining his colleagues in the intellectual scrutiny of society, he advocates his films as being beyond analysis: My films are instinctual, anthropological. I am not a theoretical person. I know that I have the ability to articulate images that sit deeply inside us, that I can make them visible. It is an athletic endeavor, like life itself. Things work inside me for a long time, images become clearer, and at a certain point, I just sit down and write the script in three days. There is always a key image; everything emerges from that, physically, not by analysis. Also, Herzog often upstages the films themselves with the difficulties and dangers of making them. For example, he and two cameramen, at a moment's notice, flew to a volcano on an evacuated Caribbean island to film a native who refused to leave. Herzog interviewed the man despite warnings from the authorities that the volcano would soon erupt and destroy the island. In the end, the volcano did not erupt , and Herzog released his account as a documentary, La Soufriere (1977). While his other outings have not been quite so dramatic, he still courts danger during production. Les Blank and Maureen Gosling's film, Burden of Dreams (1982), documents the near-insurmountable troubles undertaken by Herzog for the filming of Werner Herzog quoted in Gideon Bachmann, "The Man on the Volcano: A Portrait of Werner Herzog," Film Quarterly, 31. No. 1 (Fall 1977 ). pp. 7-8.______________________________________ 5 Fitzcarraldo (1982). While news of these cinematic expeditions is fascinating, it also reinforces an heroic mystery that distracts one from the issues posed by Herzog's opposition to the classical Hollywood model of the pampered and studio-bound director. The idea of Herzog as a rugged "loner" braving herculean odds to realize his personal vision is another device to support the anti- analytical attitude that the filmmaker advocates. The more accessible literature highlighting Herzog has fallen victim to this view of the director. So, once again, tales are spun of the brave Bavarian on the volcano. Poetic meanders describe how indescribable his visuals are. These give the reader little opportunity to do anything other than succumb to Herzog's seductive anti- intellectualism. While this "criticism" pays homage to Herzog's image, it does a great disservice to his films, which are worthy of discussion on all levels. But the director's disparagement of intellectualism is echoed by his films, which seem intrinsically biased against intellectual activity. The most memorable moments of a Herzog film appear to visualize ineffable qualities that elude rationalization. This reception adds greater tension to his critical comprehension. As Jan Dawson has writ ten: . . . The fact that Herzog denies the value of _____________analysis and criticism does not, of course.________ detract from the merit of his films. It does, however, leave the best-intentioned critic suspecting himself of an act of bad faith or blasphemy, somewhat akin to tap-dancing in church. The recent explosion of scholarship on the New German Cinema has sought to overcome such obstacles to Herzog's critical assessment. Much of it has also implicitly questioned his inclusion within the movement. Reacting to the unquestioning reverence and oversimplification of the more accessible criticism, contemporary scholarship has found Herzog's anti-intellectualism antithetical to the leftist political orientation of the West German film movement. His lack of intellectualism has tainted his films with a regressive quality often confronted by the more serious critics. Robert Phillip Kolker writes: Of all major contemporary European filmmakers, Herzog is the most willing to allow his images to stand uninterrogated; to allow them, and the carefully selected music he insinuates under them, to generate amazement, promote reverie, and frustrate analysis. His films, like his characters, are without^shadows, and . . . without deeper meaning. Kolker's is not a solitary voice. Mixing thorough historic research with psychoanalysis, Thomas Elsaesser has Jan Dawson, "In Memoriam: Jan Dawson," BFI Monthly Film Bulletin, 47, No. 561 (October 1980), p. 204. ^ Robert Phillip Kolker, The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema (New York: Oxford Univ Press. 1983), p. 265. 7 created a formidable body of work that appreciates the historical specificity of New German Cinema while acknowledging its contradictions as a film movement seeking distinctiveness in the shadows of American hegemony. In his articles, Elsaesser is most appreciative of textual manifestations that are directly traceable to political and psychoanalytic exigencies. The greatest beneficiary of this criticism is Fassbinder, who thereby successfully antagonizes Hollywood ideology. As for several others, Elsaesser writes: However disparate the best films of the new German cinema, it comes as no surprise to find in the films of Herzog, Syberberg, Schroeter and Wenders, for example, an unusual degree of aesthetic closure towards formal beauty and abstraction, a refusal to be explicit on the level of argument and meaning. Sensuousness, colour, and emotional luxuriance to the point of morbidity lure the viewer into accepting as valid discourse a social stance that is poignantly defensive and individualistic to a vulnerable extent. Furthermore, Elsaesser observes that Herzog "has assumed his 'displacement'" from the problems of Germany "lucidly and ruthlessly," manifesting his disinterest in the West German situation by setting none (sic) of his features in Thomas Elsaesser, "The Postwar German Cinema," in Fassbinder , ed. Tony Rayns, 2nd ed. (London: British Film Institute, 1979), p. 13. 8 contemporary Germany and focusing his documentaries on g subjects seemingly disconnected from political pertinence. Kaja Silverman has written a very influential article on Herzog's Every Man for Himself and God Against All (Jeder fur sich und Gott gegen alle, 1974). The thoroughness of her psychoanalytic investigation promises to make the article the definitive Lacanian reading of the film for some time to come. However, Silverman concludes her piece by stating that Herzog surrounds his Kaspar Hauser film with his own auteuristic dramatis persona. She thus situates the film "firmly within the dominant 9 cinematic tradition." This critical epilogue remains arguable because Silverman does not strongly connect it to her psychoanalytic thesis. One senses that Silverman, not unlike Elsaesser, is prescribing resistance to dominant cinema through the transformation or revision of filmic codes that she never actually mentions. Another detriment to Herzog's unqualified critical acceptance is his problematic relationship to the so-called Third World: those non-Western nations with economies largely or wholly determined by colonialism or other Western interests. With eight of his films set completely 8 Ibld• 9 Kaja Silverman, "Kaspar Hauser's "Terrible Fall' into Narrative," New German Critique, Nos. 24/25 (Fall- Winter 1981-82), p. 93. 9 or partially in qualifying countries, Herzog has been criticized for obscuring the political bearings of lands increasingly struggling for identity outside the colonialist and racist misconceptions perpetuated by Western economic interests, including cinema. Perhaps the most caustic criticism of this kind directed against Herzog comes from Howard Davis and Dilwyn Jenkins' evaluation of Fitzcarraldo: There are a number of disturbing similarities between Fitzcarraldo and Herzog's relations to Indian affairs. They both used the Indians to drag a ship over a hill. They both took Indians from a variety of areas to work a long way from home. They both paid the Indians very little. In sh^gt, they both exploited them for personal gain. The validity of such criticism places Herzog at odds with the anti-colonialism active in both the New German Cinema and the Third World. With many of the most insightful scholars focusing on Herzog's shortcomings, one must wonder what value his position in West German film holds. So far, the most helpful assessment of his work has been constructed by Timothy Corrigan. In his book New German Film: The Displaced Image, Corrigan establishes a critical platform combining Hans Robert Jauss's Erwartungshorizont, or ^ Howard Davis and Dilwyn Jenkins, "Fitzcarraldo: Exotic and Perverse," Jump Cut, No. 30 ( 1985), p. 8._________ TO' "expectation horizon," with Christian Metz's notion of the vraisemblable to establish the unavoidable influence of Hollywood upon non-Hollywood film. Seizing Hollywood- oriented viewer expectations as a concept to be criticized as well as means of attracting audiences, the West German film movement, Corrigan explains, radically re-evaluates communicator-spectator relationshipsThus Corrigan portrays New German Cinema as an intertext that searches for both an audience and an identity within the shadow of Hollywood— a task made difficult under the stigma of a subsidized, arguably elitist enterprise. With these tools, Corrigan defends New German Cinema as a movement no less unified and no more coincidental than, say, the French New Wave. Discussing the relationship of Fassbinder, Wenders, Schlondorff, Syberberg, Kluge, and Herzog to the vraisemblable and to the needs of new audiences, New German Film takes advantage of each director's best contributions to an expanding cinema. Herzog's films have finally found a scholar who dwells on their potential, one who accentuates the director's opposition to Hollywood spectatorship and who declines to be overwhelmingly prescriptive. "For what Herzog does," says Corrigan, "is imaginatively search out energies and irrationalities that at once challenge and dwarf ** Corrigan, New German Film, p. 17. 11 humanitity's social conception of itself as a universal 1 2 center." The director's disavowal of anthropocentrism has been noted before by sympathetic critics, but this has usually been accompanied by their uninquisitive awe of the 13 filmmaker, which is absent in Corrigan. He continues: For Herzog, the smug and mostly academic distinction between art and entertainment, between experimental and commercial cinema, is a dangerously false one. For him, this opposition has itself created certain audience expectations, and has little to do with the way audiences can potentially see when and if the opposition dissolves. As experiments within commercial cinema, Herzog's films seek to erase that culturally inculcated distinction which has wrongly conditioned viewers to see a certain way, to avoid the new and radical, and to remain satisfied with the commercially commonplace. He seeks, that is, to m ^ e commercial audiences radical seers. . . . But the issue of Herzog's anti-inte11ectualism impairing the the progressive nature of New German Cinema has become much more desperate since the death of Fassbinder and the success of uncritically Hollywood- oriented films like Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot (1982). If the financial sources of New German Cinema combine to 12 Ibid.. , p. 124 . 1 3 For example, see Alan Greenberg, "Notes on Some European Directors," American Film, 3, No. 1 (October 1977), pp. 52-53; and Lawrence O'Toole, "The Great Ecstasy of the Filmmaker Herzog," Film Comment, 15, No. 6 (November-December 1979), pp. 34-35. 14 Corrigan, New German Film, p. 125. . r2- support more conventional product and to exclude the less profitable filmmakers, then the problems and possibilities so painstakingly examined by West German film might find no arena for further development. A radically progressive cinema could wither and die. Herzog's groping for even larger audiences with Nosferatu— The Vampyre (Nosferatu— Phantom der Nacht, 1979), Fitzcarraldo, and the English- language Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) may be symptomatic of this continuing co-option of German originality by American standards. Yet, critical preoccupation with Herzog also reaffirms his standing as a major force in world cinema. Despite his claims, Herzog's films still draw much of their power from the socioeconomic restlessness that has inspired his more ostensibly political colleagues. As part of the vanguard of a far-sighted film movement, Herzog cannot remain a reactionary figure. With Corrigan's positive evaluation as my platform, I shall demonstrate how the director's so-called lack of interrogation in his films is actually an interrogation of dominant passive spectatorship and dominant narrative assumptions. Thus I seek to address a question posed by Eric Rentschler: [H]ow does one confront films bound up in a virulent fatalism without, on the one hand, succumbing to such an undialectical world view _____________or. on the other hand, without rejecting Herzog's 13 clearly singular and haunting images of violated innocents, suffering outsiders, and border situations? Thus far America[n] critics have, by and large, not found a way out of this hermeneutical impasse— nor have they begun to ^ perceive it as a problem worth their attention. An auteur study such as this need not be discouraged by the disengagement from auteurism present in both contemporary criticism and New German Cinema. Although it challenges the heroic individualism of many auteurists, New German Cinema does not eradicate the director as a motivating force. As Miriam Hansen explains: The German concept of "Autorenkino" [auteur cinema], closer to the original "politique des auteurs" as advocated by director-critics like Godard and Truffaut, was primarily a programmatic principle with the goal to provide the direct<j>g with absolute artistic and financial control. The auteur is thus an integral part of the film movement to which Herzog belongs. However, it is not the intention of this study to construct the director as a unified whole with which to smooth over the contradictions within his canon. Rather, the auteur is the artistic co-ordinator, vulnerable to the politics of finance and the logistics of production, who may raise issues within each film traceable ^ Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time, p . 8 7. 1 6 Miriam Hansen, "Cooperative Auteur Cinema and Oppositional Public Sphere: Alexander Kluge's Contribution to Germany in Autumn," New German Critique, Nos. 24/25 (Fall-Winter 1981-82), p. 37 fn. (in this case) to his "artistic and financial control." Little attempt shall be made to harmonize the works, as I believe that similar effects from film to film may have dissimilar effects within each context. A hazy critical perception of Herzog's work is abetted by an equally hazy understanding of the Federal Republic of Germany (the Bundesrepublik Deutschland or BRD). So, my first chapter narrates the financial origins of the New German Cinema and their relation to cinema and politics in West Germany. This shall establish the socioeconomic context of Herzog's canon. The second chapter is an analysis of Signs of Life, in which I trace Herzog's formal deviations from dominant film style. My purpose is to delineate some political implications of Herzog's non-conformity. My reading depends on Bertolt Brecht's concept of the Verfremdungseffekt, or "alienation effect," briefly described as a technique of taking human social incidents to be portrayed and labelling them as something striking, something that calls for explanation, . . . [something] not to be taken for granted, not just natural. The object of this "effect" is to allow the spectator to criticize ^ constructively from a social point of view. Bertolt Brecht, "The Street Scene: A Basic Model for an Epic Theatre," in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 125. _ i5 My estimation of viewer criticism is drawn from Noel Burch's study To the Distant Observer, particularly his distinction between presentational and representational 18 cinema. Although Burch limits his analysis to the cinema of Japan, his book provides a means to analyze any film that privileges its own opacity (presentationalism) over its seeming transparency (representationalism). Burch recognizes how film may counter its own illusions of reality and three-dimensionality through acknowledgement of its materiality, and how this awareness functions as political criticism. The third chapter explores the visionary aspects of two more films: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Got tes , 1972) and Every Man for Himself and God Agains t All. This section draws upon Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic models of the symbolic and the imaginary to reach its conclusion. The use of these concepts shall be explained as the chapter progresses. Chapter Four extends this strategy into an analysis of Herzog's Fata Morgana 1 9 ( 1971 ) . 1 8 Burch draws his terminology from Earl Ernst, The Kabuki Theatre (New York: Grove, 1956), pp. 18-19. See jNoel Burch, To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema, rev. and ed. Annette Michelson (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1979), pp. 69-70. 1 9 The year that parenthetically follows the first mention of each film title is, to the best of my knowledge, the year of the film's release, which is not necessarily the year of the film's production. u But, before proceeding, I must clarify what I mean by the term "New German Cinema," a term that reverberates with commercial appropriation as well as artistic integrity. No two scholars conclusively agree what the phrase means. Some prefer not to use it, resorting to Young German Cinema, das neue Kino, or die neue Welle instead. Yet, to different critics, these alternative terms have their own implications. James Franklin writes: West German film historians differentiate between the "young" German filmmakers— that is, the Oberhausen group and their immediate successors— and the "new" German filmmakers of the 1970s. For Americans such a division may seem an unnecessary confusing of issues. Whatever it is to be called, the "young" German or the "new" German cinema has now existed long enough that one can distinguish between its ear^g representatives and its later ones. For present purposes, my own use of the term "New German Cinema" is as follows: the film practice of West Germany, instigated by government funding, that seeks critical spectat orship through the transgression and re- evaluation of dominant cinema. This working definition obviously does not include all West German films made since the 1960s. Like Corrigan, I view New German Cinema as, in the liberal sense of the word, a movement, not a calculated James Franklin, New German Cinema: From Oberhausen to Hamburg (Boston: Twayne, 1983), p. 34. !?' movement of uniform stylistic techniques, but a movement united in its quest for oppositional spectatorship. I must also make clear my concept of dominant cinema. This term refers to a particular way of shooting and assembling a film, one which prizes the unobtrusiveness of the film's materiality, where on-screen occurrences seem to erase the means of their telling. The epitome of dominant cinema is the Hollywood movie. However, one could probably argue that every single Hollywood film ever produced contains exceptions to dominant conventions and therefore ought not to be considered as dominant cinema. Such an argument, were it ever made, might only confirm that Hollywood "grammar" is merely a construct of industrial mass production and not the royal road to the viewer's suspension of disbelief. In short, "dominant cinema" is only a pigeonhole , but a very helpful one against which to compare any film practice that seeks alternatives to the most familiar forms of production, distribution, exhibition, and reception. My use of the term refers back to the seeming invisibility of narrative enunciation and Hollywood's overshadowing other film-producing sources. But I use this term with the knowledge that such dominance is ideal and never complete. These pages do not intend to heroize Herzog. Other writings have already done that, and they have not helpfully contributed to a critical understanding of his 18 work. Instead, this project proposes to illuminate a body of cinema that, typically, has been either mystifyingly revered or wrongfully maligned. By doing so, I seek to enlarge the reader's awareness of a cinematic practice that, despite its flaws, challenges mundane ways of seeing and opens the audience to new perceptual and experiential possibilities. 19 I. Life Signs West Germany is an artificial country. On its eastern border lies the equally artificial German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR). The old phrase "divide and conquer" was turned around at the end of World War II when the Soviet Union split the defeated Third Reich with its Western allies: Britain, France, and the USA. First justified as a temporary means to stifle Nazism, the borders of the divided Germany were soon consolidated by the occupational powers to mark the bastions of opposing ideologies. In 1949, two separate governments arose, both unsurprisingly modeled after their respective occupiers. In short, Germany is the European rupture point of colonization by the superpowers. This uneasy heritage has given West Germany a schizophrenic character. Nominally a sovereign power, the BRD manifests its accountability to Western interests through its inability to reunite with the DDR under one government (indicating the colonial status of both countries) and through its large presence of NATO troops. (Allied occupation was exchanged for NATO membership, which raises the question of where one ends and the other begins.) Also, West Germany has often found itself in the conflicting position of upholding its image as a mighty 20 bastion of democracy while, at the same time, showing itself to be the friendly anti-fascist. However, crackdowns on extremists by the West German authorities raise the old ghost of opposing voices suppressed by the Nazis. The eruption of terrorism by revolutionary groups in the midst of West Germany's quiet prosperity has raised intriguing issues of fascism. Obviously, armed violence— whether by those in power or by their opponents— runs the risk of harming innocent lives and reeks of past militarism. But other voices have argued that the placidity of the BRD masks the turbulence beneath its surface, that prosperity is the accumulation of ideological elements which perpetuate a national identity determined by foreign forces. In other words, the image of prosperous serenity is its own form of fascism. While many strongly disagree with this criticism, the conflict between sovereignty and accountability remains. A similar dilemma has plagued the history of the West German cinema. As Elsaesser has shown, the media policies of Allied-occupied Germany reflected the fortification of "West Germany as a capitalist stronghold to counter the Soviet sphere of influence east of the Elbe."'*' The use of Allied Germany as a dumping ground for the long-denied ^ Elsaesser, "Postwar German Cinema," p. 2. Much information in this chapter is drawn from this article. 21 Hollywood films bolstered Germany's glamourous perception of America. Meanwhile, what remained of the old production and distribution facilities (the famous UFA studios were in the Soviet territory) were dismantled and rearranged to favor the occupiers. Two priorities governed American thinking on the film industry in particular: the reinstatement of "reliable" (if necessary ex-Nazi) personnel in executive positions, and the necessity that the industry be organised on lines that could transmit an ideologically clear message without being sufficiently organised to achieve economic dominance. When the smoke cleared, the West German film industry was marked by (1) a majority of distributors owned by American companies, (2) American-instigated laws preventing the merging and consolidation of small production firms, (3) an overwhelming majority of domestic cinemas playing imported films, and (4) the US State Department lobbying against possible quotas to curb Hollywood imports. Given this scenario, it is not surprising that the West German films of the following decade were of poor quality; it is surprising that West German films were made at all. Sporadic serious works like the Trummerfilme, or "rubble films," could still slip by, but only with great difficulty. The impoverishment of the West German film culture of the late '40s and the '50s endorsed much lighter 2 Ibid. 22 fare: the Heimatfilme, or "home-land films," which portrayed an idealized rural Germany in a past void of political consciousness; deadly serious adaptations of deadly serious literature; American-styled Westerns, preferably with American actors; rustic comedies; and re- releases of old Nazi films that did not overtly sing der Fiihrer' s praises and were thus considered safe. After the lessening of Allied control in the early 1950s, the new federal government began exercising its subsidizing powers so as not to alienate potential domestic commerce in the cinema. Soon, federal credit guarantees to banks financing independent productions made possible rare gems like Herbert Vesely's Stop Running (Nicht mehr fliehen, 1955). But this tactic also brought all guaranteed projects under governmental scrutiny and forced independent producers into unrealistic package deals that destroyed their small companies. Ultimately, this further consolidated the power of the existing, American-supervised production companies. The Federal Ministry of the Interior (Bundesministerium des Innern) participated in film subsidy through the funding of short "cultural" films and by awarding annual cash prizes for the best West German feature. The ministry's taste was parochial; cold-war and pro-NATO perspectives were regularly rewarded. However, the insubstantiality of the cinema culture sometimes made '23 choosing an even marginally worthy film a very difficult task. And when the ministry was unable to find a deserving recipient for its 1961 award, it sparked a reaction with far-reaching effects. On 28 February 1962, a group of 26 West Germans involved in cinema issued a collective statement at the Oberhausen Short-Film Festival: The collapse of the conventional German film industry has finally removed the economic basis of an intellectual attitude that we reject. Thereby the new film has a chance to come alive. In the last few years German short films by young authors, directors, and producers have received a large number of prizes at international festivals and have found international critical recognition. These works and their success show that the future of German cinema lies with those who have proven that they speak a new cinematic language. In Germany as in other countries the short film has become the school and experimental laboratory for the feature film. We declare our intention of creating the new German feature film. This new film needs new freedoms: freedom from the conventions of the commercial film industry. Freedom from influence by commercial partners. Freedom from domination by special interest groups. We have concrete artistic, formal, and economic conceptions about the production of the new German film. We are collectively prepared to bear the economic risks. The old film is dead. We believe in the new. 3 Hans Rolf Strobel, The Oberhausen Manifesto, reprinted in Franklin, New German Cinema, p. 27. The translation is Franklin's. Signatories included Herbert Vesely, Alexander Kluge, Norbert Kiickelmann, Edgar Reitz, and Peter Schamoni. For the record, Herzog did not sign the Manifesto, nor is there evidence that he attended the Festival . zk The cinematic involvement of the Manifesto's signatories was mostly within the government-funded cultural shorts that garnered prizes at at festivals like Oberhausen and then quickly slipped into obscurity. Their attempts to reach wider audiences through the feature film industry were frustrated by its closed, nepotistic system. Through a rousing proclamation, the signatories hoped to catch the attention of parties who might offer a means to feature production. But: Far from being a sign of organised group activity, the Manifesto in fact constituted virtually the total of that activity; united only in their frustrations and ambitions, its signatories lacked any common plan of campaign. Some literature implies that the foundations of New German Cinema were built by the lobbying powers of Alexander Kluge and Norbert Kuckelmann (both former law students), but unfortunately gives us little insight into the workings of West German politics One can speculate that the government wanted to endorse domestic film exhibition. Since the beginning of the BRD television boom in the late 1950s, cinema attendance had been marked by an almost catastrophic i \ Jan Dawson, "A Labyrinth of Subsidies: The Origins of the New German Cinema," Sight and Sound, 50, No. 1 (Winter 1980-81), p. 14. ^ For example, see Rentschler, West German Film, p. 39; and Dawson, "Labyrinth," p. 15. _______ 25- decline in audiences. Renewed motion picture production could be governmentally supported as a catalyst for renewed box office activity. But considering that West German movie houses earned considerably more from foreign productions than domestic, lobbying for revitalization of the motion picture industry would have to be subsidiary to other considerations.^ A more persuasive argument could be made for the government's desire to bolster the German image abroad. World War II had left seemingly indelible images of German cruelty in the minds of other nations— especially those occupied during the war. To many, anything German equalled Nazism, a notion sanctified by the multitudes of war movies made by Hollywood. Germany's past cultural and artistic heritage could do little to dispel this powerful negative image. As late as twenty years after the war's end, American humorist Tom Lehrer could still sardonically sing about the admittance of West Germany to NATO's multi lateral nuclear force: Once all the Germans were war-like and mean, But that couldn't happen again. We taught them a lesson in 1918, Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, however, say that government involvement was due exclusively to television's disruption of cinema attendance. See The German Cinema (London: Dent, 1971), p. 124. 26' And they've hardly bothered us since then.^ If film could help perpetuate Germany's low profile, then film might also help change people's minds. In the 1960s, the auteur cinemas of France and Italy brought not only considerable commercial success, but also audience interest in the national cultures. Italy in particular used its cinema as a means to publicize its change from a fascist country to a haven of liberal humanism. West German politicians might have been persuaded that an auteur cinema could do the same for their country, thus bolstering tourism and other economic advantages. Whatever the reason, the Federal Minister of the Interior, Hermann Hocherl, established the Kuratorium junger deutscher Film in 1964, a remarkable departure from earlier attempts at government film subsidy because it privileged the individual director, rather than the distributor or the producer of package deals, as the controller of the film's content. Another innovation was the addition of film journalists to the decision-making board, members whose interest in cinema was not limited to a monetary level. The Kuratorium acquired 5 million DM of federal money for its first three years. As much as 300,000 DM could be loaned, interest-free, toward the ^ Tom Lehrer, "MLF Lullaby," That Was the Year That Was, Reprise Records, RS 6179, 1965. 27 completion of a submitted script. The Kuratorium expected the film's profits to help pay back the loan, which would then be reinvested in another project. To ensure that the film-makers really did retain artistic control over their work, the Kuratorium contracts made it highly favourable for directors to become their own producers and form their own production companies. The state-supported Autorenkino spawned West Germany's first feature to win a prize at a major international film festival: Kluge's Yesterday Girl (Abschied von Gestern, 1966). Other award-winning and critically respected films followed in its wake, proving that there was a viable alternative to the BRD's dominant film culture. Titles included Reitz's Meal Times (Mahlzeiten, 1967), Schaaf's Tattooing (Tatowierung, 1968), Peter Fleischmann's Hunt ing Scenes from Lower Bavaria (Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern, 1968), and Herzog's Signs of Life. Fuelled by the new accessibility of film funds, the Jungfilmer, as the new directors were called, realized their chance to seriously question the contradictions of West German society. Uncomfortable issues— such as the role of Nazism in German history, the BRD's forgetfulness about its fascistic heritage, the blind adoption of American culture, and the numb complacency of West German g Dawson, "Labyrinth," p. 16. 28 society— had long been eclipsed by the unquestioning films that dominated domestic screens. The Jungfilmer sought to address these problems not only on the level of content (Yesterday Girl, for example, views the contradictions of the BRD through the eyes of an East German immigrant), but also on the level of form. The questioning of the cinematic medium had reached new heights in the French New Wave, where filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais deconstructed the "seamless" narrative, and in so doing, disrupted its ideology. Their new German colleagues now nurtured this approach. Through a critical, self reflexive cinema, the Jungfilmer saw the possibility to construct a discourse that did not parrot the dominant style of Hollywood. The self-reflexive cinema signalled a new investment in West German audiences. Rather than immerse oneself in the seeming wholeness of Hollywood or the Heimatfilm, the spectator was encouraged to acknowledge the materiality of the motion picture as a textualizing construct. The new subsidized cinema was thus able to adapt to film Brecht's recommendations to the actor of the epic theatre. The motion picture could continue its fringe role as a form of direct address, as— to paraphrase Brecht— a process of exchange between spectator and film, with the latter at 29 bottom addressing itself directly to the spectator despite 9 all the strangeness and detachment. Of course, not every subsidized filmmaker used the medium in this way. But even in such relatively straightforward examples as Schlondorff's Young Torless (Per junge Torless, 1966), one senses an awareness of the mediation and limits of the medium. Yet, not every subsidized filmmaker linked this newly manifested concern to Brecht — least of all Herzog, who once said: "It's always being written that every German has something to do with Brecht. . . . But I can't stand Brecht at all."^ Nevertheless, the distanciation effect that Brecht advocated became a major element of the international inclination toward a self-reflexive cinema. Brecht's influence upon the French New Wave and the movements it inspired remains decisive. And Herzog, as a product of that environment, cannot be divorced from it. The search of the Jungfilmer for a film culture outside the usual capitalist structure was no coincidence. West Germany's role— indeed, its very existence— as a capitalist stronghold on the socialist frontier directly 9 See Bertolt Brecht, "Notes to The Threepenny Opera," in his The Threepenny Opera, trans. and ed. Ralph Manheim and John Willett (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979), p. 93. ^ Werner Herzog interviewed by Hans Gunther Pflaum, "Interview," Werner Herzog, eds. Peter W. Jansen and Wolfram Schiitte, Reihe Film, No. 22 (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1979), p. 59. My translation. J Q - brought about the moribund film culture against which the Oberhausen Manifesto protested. The subservience of West German film to Hollywood displayed strong links to the subservience of West Germany to the United States. To criticize the dominant film culture was also to criticize this hierarchical status, and to seek alternative cinema audiences was also to seek alternatives to the status quo. However, the Jungfilmer were not severed from market interests. The birth of New German Cinema was not the birth of a socialist system. After all, the Kuratorium depended on the film's profits (in addition to tax money) to stay in business. Although the Kuratorium opened possibilities on the level of production, the established forces still controlled distribution and exhibition. The atmosphere of optimism generated the interest in film culture that made Herzog's productivity possible. In December 1964, while only a 22-year-old humanities student, Werner Herzog won 10,000 DM from the Club der Munchner Filmjournalisten for his screenplay "Feuerzeichen" ("Fire Signs"). This must have been an auspicious occasion for someone whose only film education reputedly came after stealing a 35-millimeter camera. Two years later, the Kuratorium loaned Herzog a further 300,000 DM toward realizing his screenplay. Perhaps because of the Kuratorium's encouragement, he put together his own small Munich-based production company, Werner Herzog 31 Filmproduktion. By June 1967, he amassed the necessary 400,000 DM to make his picture. During production, Herzog changed the title to Signs of Life, a phrase that could have referred to the West German cinema itself. Although conceived in a time of optimism, Signs of Life was completed in a period of pessimism. Rather than lose its power, the West German film establishment fought against the new legislation and new cinematic activity. Wielding its own lobbying powers, the commercial industry instigated the passage of a bill that diverted subsidy monies almost exclusively to films grossing 500,000 DM or more, then refused to release or exhibit Kuratorium- financed productions. This ensured neither popular nor federal support for the new cinema. The Film Development Act (Filmforderungsgesetz), passed 22 December 1967, established to 10-pfennig levy on each cinema ticket sold in the BRD, the proceeds of which would help finance the now retroactive subsidy. This meant, of course, that a virtually bankrupt industry with failing attendances was responsible for subsidizing its own future development: one possible reason, besides inflation, why the levy was raised to 15 pfennig when the Act was revised in 1974. It also provided a new, self-justifying and circular argument for using popular taste rather than indefinable cultural standards as the criterion for official investment: subsidies J2; could be a question o|^giving the audience what it wanted to pay for. Given this state of affairs (and these affairs of state), one is not surprised to learn from Elsaesser that Signs of Life never received regular theatrical 1 2 distribution in West Germany. Nevertheless, after it premiered on 25 June 1968 at the Berlin Film Festival, the movie won the Berlinale's "Silver Bear" award and the Federal Film Prize of 350,000 DM, both in recognition of an outstanding first feature. Also, the Film Assessment Bureau (Filmbewertungstelle) of Wiesbaden awarded Signs of Life a certificate of special merit (besonders wertvol: "especially valuable") that would have lessened the burden of entertainment tax had the film run commercially. Ironically, the power of the Film Assessment Bureau to exempt the film from taxation resulted from the Film Development Act , which was created by the powers that refused to release and exhibit the film; thus the opportunity for taxation never arose. So, festival crowds comprised the film's largest audience. When it appeared at the New York Film Festival later in 1968, overseas filmgoers received it in a virtual vacuum: the Festival unveiled Kluge's and Schlondorff's ^ Dawson, "Labyrinth," p. 18. 1 2 Elsaesser, "Postwar," p. 13. 33 first features to American eyes only the year before. The average festival patron was unconscious of the post-war German film and the context of these new entries. The premiere works of the New German Cinema met with American 13 critical disdain. As late as 1976, Gerald Mast could write in A Short History of the Movies: "With the exception of providing the world with a series of lessons on the use of film to bend the public's mind, the German film has been 1 4 remarkably invisible since 1933." Herzog was lucky. He not only won backing for his first feature, but he also managed to win enough awards to continue making features and documentaries. Unlike many other neophyte and would-be filmmakers, Herzog somehow conformed to the BRD's vague and constantly reformulated definition of awardable culture. The Federal Ministry of the Interior required its 350,000 DM prize to be invested in another film, so Herzog began financing his second feature , Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge haben klein angef angen, 1970). Like Signs of Life, Dwarfs was not given a regular theatrical release. According to Herzog, the film was briefly banned, and he had to rent individual cinemas to 13 Franklin, New German Cinema, p. 22. 14 Gerald Mast, A Short History of the Movies, 2nd ed. ^(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976), p. 179.____________________ 3 k give his feature any kind of exhibition.^ Herzog's colleagues also had difficulty distributing and exhibiting their films. The desperation of their situation instigated Kuratorium funding of exhibition outlets that favored the new cinema. It also prompted greater involvement between film and television, a deepening relationship that culminated in the Film/Television Agreement (Film/Fernsehen-Abkommen) of 1974 . Before the Agreement, West German television (which is run on a BBC-style licensing system) financially supported small films, but ruined their chances for theatrical exposure by broadcasting them too soon. In brief, the Agreement allowed both a minimum two-year window for cinema exhibition and the establishment of a fund for film producers. Finding television financing, Herzog's subsequent features also found a guaranteed outlet and the chance to reach larger audiences. The children of Oberhausen were finally making films under a marginally alternate production system, but it was hardly the death-blow to the "old film" envisioned by the Manifesto. On the contrary, dominant cinema, particularly German-dubbed Hollywood features, maintained the most conspicuous presence in the West German film culture while the aging Jungfilmer and their succeeding generations Scott Murray, "Werner Herzog: Interview," Cinema Papers [1, No. 4] (December 1974), p. 23. 35 struggled for survival in alternative movie houses and on television. In the production of their films, thrift was the rule, opulence the rare exception. Finally, the massive audiences predicted at Oberhausen never materialized. But a new audience did. By the mid-1970s, the American movie critics had made a slow and unexpected about-face. New German Cinema, as the phenomenon was tagged, became the darling of New York critics and a favorite topic of conversation for Manhattan cocktail parties. Exactly when and why the change occurred remains undetermined. According to Franklin, the pivotal film was Fassbinder's The Merchant of Four Seasons (Per Handler der vier Jahreszeiten, 1972), which drew favorable critical response after its screening at the 1972 New York Film Festival.^ The film is also pivotal to Fassbinder's canon: it was his first work to clearly cultivate a visual lushness in place of his earlier rough-hewn seediness. The relatively lavish historical recreation of Every Man for Himself and God Against All also impressed critics, and articles glorifying Herzog's daring-do began appearing subsequent to its release. (The seemingly sumptuous Aguirre would not be distributed in the USA until 1977). Wenders would complete the triumvirate of German auteurs with his luxurious-looking, American-oriented production, 16 Franklin, New German Cinema, pp. 22-23. 36" The American Friend (Per amerikanische Freund, 1977). The more demanding experiments of Kluge and of Straub and Huillet were the last to be noticed by the American popular press, despite their regular appearances on the film festival circuit and an early monograph on Straub.^ One concludes that American critics only took notice of West German cinema when its directors made their social criticisms palatable to softer tastes. The mind more disposed to dominant cinema could then consume the lush visual spectacle and devote minimal attention to the deeper issues behind it. American reception of the New German Cinema, by and large, divorced the screen's content from the political context that inspired it. West Germany's new cinematic legitimacy entrenched itself further in America by the dissemination of films through cultural channels, such as classroom screenings and Goethe Institute retrospectives. As much as these outlets spread the wealth of West German creativity, they also commoditized the films as cultural products, a strategy with the goal, it seems, of diverting more disposable 18 income toward more German artworks and exports. Richard Roud, Straub (New York: Viking, 1972). 18 Cf. Rentschler, West German Film, esp. pp. 78-88; and Thomas Elsaesser, "Lili Marleen: Fascism and the Film Industry," October, No. 21 (Summer 1982), pp. 115-19. 37 The larger American audiences for Herzog, Fassbinder, and Wenders ensured larger returns for private film investors, giving Herzog and Fassbinder greater access to private backing and giving Wenders his first Hollywood contract. The subsequent inclusion of the internationally oriented Schlondorff, the optically ostentatious Syberberg, and the crowd-pleaser Petersen into the liturgy of American popular criticism reinforced surface values as the principle bait for New German Cinema audiences. This, added to the uncertainties of government and television financing, made the New German Cinema especially vulnerable to Hollywood co-option. Using their names as salable products, Herzog, Fassbinder, and Wenders could afford to strengthen their careers, unlike their many struggling colleagues unrecognized abroad. New German Cinema became, for most intents and purposes, a phenomenon of foreign reception, a phenomenon conducive to the export of marketable goods, that was much less visible domestically 19 than it was across Germany's western border. The continuing course of the West German motion picture in the direction of dominant cinema compromises its unique identity even further. Realizing that the government production money that financed the progressive film movement also financed sex films and other forms of 19 Rentschler, West German Film, pp. 64-65. 38 20 cinematic exploitation, one may argue that the New German Cinema has not only inadvertently helped perpetuate the cinema it sought to abolish, but has also given cultural legitimacy to the "old cinema's" present-day incarnation. Still, one should not chastise the New German Cinema for failing to establish an identity completely independent of Hollywood; this utopian scenario could only be realized by a political identity outside the jurisdiction of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The film-goer should, instead, be thankful that a post-war German presence has materialized at all in the cinema and rejoice that this presence is manifested so brilliantly. This brief historical summary serves to balance the text-orientation of the following chapters. Herzog's formal unconventionality arose from a specific political and artistic context. Despite his uniqueness, to best understand Herzog's significant contributions to New German Cinema and to the cinemas of the world, one must comprehend the director as a part of this context, not apart from it. 20 Dawson, "Labyrinth," p. 18. 39 II. The Persistence of Vision During World War II, on a Greek island occupied by the Nazis, young Corporal Stroszek (Peter Brogle) recovers from a head wound suffered in battle. The island is quiet, and Stroszek is stationed to guard an off-shore arsenal during his recuperation. With him are his Greek wife, Nora (Athina Zacharopoulou), and two other soldiers unfit for combat: Meinhard (Wolfgang Reichmann) and Becker (Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg). The quartet has little to do: no one bothers the arsenal; chores and duties are quickly done; few commands come their way. They try to pass their time by amusing themselves with tricks and games, wandering among the Greek townsfolk, making fireworks, conversing with a travelling Gypsy (Julio Pinheiro), and studying the ancient ruins around the arsenal. The only sign of conflict is a giant crown of stones, etched by Greek partisans on the surrounding hills for all to see. While Stroszek and Meinhard are on patrol in the countryside to relieve their boredom, Stroszek suddenly freaks out at the sight of hundreds of windmills. He quixotically fires his rifle at the spinning sails, while Meinhard tries to subdue him. When Stroszek discovers that the other three reported his strange action to his superior, he drives them off the arsenal. Now clearly insane, Stroszek proclaims that he __________ , will not follow orders anymore. Furthermore, he declares war on the sun and tries to "set it on fire" with his fireworks. After all the small explosives are set off, the German army captures Stroszek and sends him away. As this synopsis suggests, Signs of Life cannot boast a strong plot. Although quirks in Stroszek's character are suggested throughout the film, his shift to insanity is abrupt and inspired by a sight that has no other relationship to the progression of the story's events. A vexed viewer might complain that the story goes nowhere and that the climax's catalyst comes soaring out of left field. On this level, such complaints are completely valid. However, the plot-oriented level of film consumption is exactly what Signs of Life criticizes, and by doing so, it draws our attention to other levels of meaning and enjoyment that are too often neglected. As a narrating medium, film possesses narrative's structure of discourse (a means to transmit the narrative) and story (the events and existents of the narrative, including character, action, and setting).^ Sometimes— as in experimental films— discourse may be limited to the materiality of the medium, while story may be limited to the relationship between elements within the frame. ^ This model is the basis for Seymour Chatman's Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978). . . — ---------------------------- ill Because of Hollywood's world-wide influence, we usually attend a screening (whether of a feature or a documentary or an experimental film) in reference to Hollywood-style story progression, if not expecting the story to be clearly laid out for us. If the story is not clear, we may impose one upon the existents or withdraw into what is on our minds, into our own narratives. While spectator inference and assumption is never completely absent from the film- viewing experience, Hollywood's seemingly closed, seemingly complete narratives usually discourage our own story-making activity. 2 Plot is the arrangement of the story's events. The plot is differentiated from the story because events and existents need not dictate a single plane of unfolding. The story may be plotted linearly or non-linearly. Many elements of the story may be directly involved in the telling or used indirectly as antecedents. In dominant film, one event is caused by the preceding event. A progression from one event to the next follows the important existents (and they are important because they are followed) so that a logic between events ultimately becomes apparent, and the story's conclusion ultimately confirms this logic. ^ Ibid . , p. 43 . 42 The dominant recipe of plot progression seldom tolerates either disturbance of the progression or uneconomic orchestration of the characters. Stories must be "lean"; as soon as the gist of the current scene is conveyed, we must rush to the next. Repetition of events and focusing on non-catalytic elements, when not used for immediate payoff, are deemed "sloppy" and often discarded. This "air-tight" approach to conveying a story is one factor of the seamless quality that dominant cinema advocates. By concentrating all our attention upon the unfolding of action toward dramatic resolution, dominant film fosters our perceptual orientation toward linear- narrative expectations at the expense of our other perceptual abilities. The opening image of Signs of Life immediately signals the plot's tenuous progression. In a long shot, a tiny truck weaves its way around a serpentine road. The camera's view of the vehicle is obscured now and then by hills. Because the cinema-spectating eye is drawn to motion, the viewer watches the truck. Anticipation is already building in the viewer; one becomes anxious to discover the truck's destination (thus resolving one narrative thread) and to encounter the human characters that the truck's image promises. But when the truck goes behind each hill, the viewer's expectations are frustrated. Instead of a motile index of humanity, a static, 43 compositionally undynamic landscape occupies the screen for seconds at a time. The repeated presence and absence of the truck's image may breed impatience in the viewer, who might start timing the emergence of the truck from behind each hill and then wonder why the take is lasting so long. Or perhaps the viewer will contemplate what the inert landscape has to offer. In the next sequence, the truck comes to a halt in front of a small hut built on dry ground. The ensuing shots have an elliptical and rough-hewn quality, not unlike that of a hastily shot documentary. The viewer observes a man on a stretcher delivered from the back of the truck. Two Nazi soldiers (one of whom is played by Herzog) carry the stretcher and leave its occupant to be tended by three poorly dressed women with dark features. This potentially bewildering jumble of images is soon countered by an unseen narrator. His voice rises from the soundtrack: Four weeks after the parachutist Stroszek was transferred to Crete, he was wounded and had to be withdrawn from battle. It occurred during a lull in ^he fighting in a village held by the Germans. Thanks to this voice from nowhere, the viewer now has a protagonist (Stroszek), a setting (Greece during World War II), and an explanation for the transpiring events. 3 The translations of the German spoken in the film are all drawn from the subtitles. 44 Thus, a diegesis is crystallized for the audience. Suddenly, the frame abruptly cuts to a hand-held shot which wanders along backstreets, past billowing sheets drying in the wind, to an open street where Nazis lie still upon the ground. But because the diegesis has been established, the viewer may assume these potentially disorienting visuals to be Stroszek's flashbacks. Soon the voice establishes the foundation of the story: Stroszek, Nora, Meinhard, and Becker guarding the arsenal. The uneventfulness of this situation is gradually accentuated as the camera records the quartet's at tempt s t o relieve their boredom: Meinhard "magically" magnetizing a knife, the four leaning against a wall to see who can stay the longest, Becker translating the inscriptions on the surrounding ruins, Meinhard exterminating roaches and hypnotizing chickens. The camera seems to dwell on these actions as though it had nothing better to do. The absence of a strong, flowing plot allows more room for the spectator to search for elements in the film dissociable from story progression, and when textualized in this manner, they assume a greater importance. One such element is the interaction of various existent classifications: child, conqueror, female, German, Greek, Gypsy, male, Nazi, partisan, and so on. Examining the narrative, one detects associations between these categories and the story. For example, the truck in the 1+5 opening shot is a Nazi vehicle; the plot is guided by the index of a fascistic, conquering power. The plot is impeded by the Greek earth as it obscures viewer perception of the truck. Later, when the wounded Stroszek is nursed, the Greek women dominate the sequence— the rough-hewn style of which is countered by the narrating male voice. In these opening moments, there are already several oppositional elements: Nazi/Greek, industrial/pastoral, male/female, conqueror/conquered. The struggle between these tendencies emerges as the film progresses: one side of the oppositions is inclined toward the progression of plot and the other toward impeding it. The spectator soon realizes that those elements associated with the conquering power, Nazi Germany, are struggling to turn Signs of Life into a dominant, plot-oriented film. They seem to want to impose a strong progression of action onto a resistant narrative. So, the dominating political force brings with it the dominating cinematic discourse. However, one also notices those elements that resist plot and closure are not Nazi. For example, shots of the island and the people are introduced without diegetic sound; this briefly ruptures the dominant conventions. In another sequence, a band of Greek children tease Meinhard as he fishes by the shore. When these children appear, the camera cuts from a long shot with them in the distance U-6 (their eyes presumably looking screen right) to a much closer head-on shot of them facing the lens. The camera then returns to the first set-up. The disruption of the eye-line match and the stageline, and the children's confrontation with the camera, bring our attention to the dominant conventions and their violation. The character of the Gypsy is more troublesome. Not only does he provide the film with two of its most plot- detracting images— his carrying the music machine and his strange wooden owl— but his very presence provokes historical questions. How could this Gypsy have a casual social conversation with comrades of those exterminating his people in concentration camps? But perhaps the most disorienting images are those of the ruins. Carved figures on the fallen walls have toppled into strange positions. Stone feet protrude from a rocky wall. Explanatory features have worn away from the decorations. The ancient writings carved into the now- shattered marble confuse more than they reveal— despite Becker's attempts to translate them. The resistance of these elements to the dominant discourse suggests the resistance of the Greek people themselves, their quiet refusal to be assimilated into the dominant ideology. The idea of resistance becomes literal in the guise of the partisans— or more exactly, by the crown that indexes their unseen presence. Like the ^7 invading army, the invading discourse cannot capture the partisans themselves. The dominant powers try to compensate for the political and narrative inhospitality of this alien environment. The imposition of plot-oriented narrative upon an unpromising situation reflects the imposition of order— "a lull in the fighting"— upon a secretly defiant landscape. But the need for activity to promote the plot contradicts the need for inactivity or complacency to stabilize the Nazi presence. This is alluded to in a scene where Stroszek meets with the Captain (Wolfgang Stumpf): CAPTAIN: What's the matter? [Was gibt's dann? Also translatable as "What's going on?"] STROSZEK: Nothing. Nothing at all. CAPTAIN: Come on and tell me about it. The film, too, seems to seek something "going on," something to be narrated from "nothing at all." The conflict between dominant and anti-dominant film styles marks the tension between dominant and dominated narrative elements. When the conflict becomes too overbearing, the voice- of-God narrator comes in to give the Nazi narrative a push. The voice tries to gloss over the difficulties of unfolding the dominant narrative, but only creates more ruptures. This becomes most noticeable when, following a series of 4 - 8 scenes showing how uneventful life is in the arsenal, we see Nora tending a bed-ridden Stroszek. The narrator informs us that Stroszek suffered an injury while tightrope walking. But the soldier's stunt was never shown. The camera missed the perfect opportunity to capture a spectacular sequence, something the film se'&as to have been waiting for. Apparently, the dominant discourse is not the omnipresent narrating power we might have believed. The fact that Stroszek was the subject of the uncapturable sequence heightens a tendency suggested throughout the film: the anti-dominant disposition is rubbing off onto the film's protagonist. Ever since his flashbacks (at least we assume they were flashbacks) intruded upon the linearity of the narrative, Stroszek has shown an inclination toward the non-dominant. His wound must have affected him psychologically; his brooding behavior throughout the film is otherwise unexplainable. (For example, in an early scene with the newlyweds, Nora reclines on their bed, obviously wanting to make love, but Stroszek is strangely distracted by an animal skull.) The narrator fills in some details of Stroszek's life for us; however, the explanations never quite account for his haunted solemnity. Furthermore, a disruption of the narrative's linearity breaks through again when Stroszek encounters some Greek children. Sitting by the harbor, he talks to them in i f 9 Greek, little of which is translated for the German speaking viewer. Apparently, Stroszek is picking up some Greek words and testing his rudimentary knowledge of the language on the children. The scene has a very spontaneous, documentary feel to it, which is heightened when a child glances at the camera. As Stroszek gazes down, the camera cuts to a lengthy take of tadpoles (?) swimming around some debris in the water. The duration of the shot and the scrutiny of its subject give the image a strangely meditative quality. However, we may infer it to be Stroszek's point of view; it is thus safely sutured within the story. But then the image suddenly shifts to a long shot of a Greek crowd watching something off-screen. The image shifts again to what we must assume to be Stroszek and Nora's wedding as they and other Greek villagers gather to be photographed. (Facing the audience, the wedding party reminds us of the motion picture camera's presence and its function as a recording device, as we are also reminded of Stroszek's bond with the conquered people.) More shots follow— cats, birds, stones, ruins— none of which adheres to dominant narrative logic. Suddenly, we are returned to the shot of the water. With this framing device, we may infer the shots to be Stroszek's reflections. They are now secured by the diegesis. We may return to the dominant narrative. 50 Yet, try as it might, the Nazi narrative cannot erase our growing awareness that something is smoldering beneath the surface of the film, beneath the dominant/dominating narrative, beneath the placidity of the town. Stroszek's fraternizing with the conquered people associates him further with the other non-dominant elements and hints at an alternative, non-dominant narrative tendency. Stroszek does not fit comfortably into his assigned role as the carrier of both plot and conquering ideology. The film's turning point comes when its protagonist is engulfed by the non-dominant. While on patrol, Stroszek and Meinhard visit the dwelling of a Greek man and his daughter. The man welcomes the German soldiers in Greek and carries on a one-way conversation with them. The first Greek spoken at length in the film, it is conveniently translated by German subtitles. This scene culminates when the man's daughter sings a song for the soldiers— or more exactly, for the camera. The young girl squirms under the scrutiny of the lens and then, facing the camera, reluctantly sings: "High on the mountain, lambs are grazing, grazing there in the loneliness. One of them is lost. Run, shepherds, run! For over the mountain are circling vultures." Despite the father's warm reception, this small hut seems more receptive to non-dominant elements. Not only is Greek the presiding language, but the daughter's uneasy 51 relationship to the camera calls attention to the cinematography— to which she is not completely willing to submit herself as a quaint spectacle for the conquering consumers (a role in which the film's consumers are momentarily cast). Furthermore, her song— not unlike the film— describes a pastoral scene jarred by the disquieting sense of impending danger. The scene's suggestion of alternative discourse serves as a prelude to the violent rupture of dominant convention that follows: Stroszek and Meinhard make their way up a hill. The camera captures them in a close shot. The soundtrack is strangely silent. When they reach the top, they look out onto the valley of windmills. Cut to a long shot of the valley and the hundreds of rotating sails. Although this image follows the logic of shot/counter shot (thus, this is Stroszek and Meinhard's point of view), its composition is not so inclined toward dominant aesthetics: the multitude of spinning blades gives the eye no locus of consumption. Cut to a long shot of the two soldiers. Stroszek takes his rifle and wildly starts shooting. Meinhard grabs the weapon from his enraged comrade and wrestles with him. The camera now jumps almost 180 degrees from a long shot in front of the men to a medium shot behind them. The struggling soldiers are out of focus. Frustrated in its attraction to the foreground objects, the spectating eye is thrown to the in-focus images of the background, the 52 windmills. But once again, the spinning windmills deny the eye a place to rest. This jump cut lasts only a few frames. Once we are assaulted by its renegade composition, the camera quickly jumps again to another shot of the windmills. This new shot resembles the background image of its predecessor too closely to be considered suitable to i , ’the dominant grammar of movie editing. The camera returns to the long shot of Stroszek and Meinhard. Stroszek seems to regain his sanity. The camera is positioned in a reverse angle approximating the position of the now off-screen windmills. Thus as Stroszek returns to his senses, the camera returns to a "suturing" perspective. Then the camera once again pans across the valley, across the windmills. We may be comforted by this reassertion of shot/counter shot, but we remain disquieted by the resistant composition. The story's grasp of this image is as tenuous as Stroszek's grasp of sanity. We are left with the unearthly sound of the spinning windmills ringing in our ears. We are not surprised when Stroszek, incensed at the other three for informing the Captain about the windmill incident, chases them from the arsenal; we know the reluctant protagonist has become a resistant protagonist. More surprising is the narrative's seeming powerlessness to bring him back into its discourse. One of Stroszek's first acts as the solitary keeper of the arsenal is to fire a gun 53 randomly into the Greek crowd from the fortress wall. His only victim is a donkey. Stroszek's strike against the dominant order begins on a note of futility, but Herzog links this revolt to another. The arbitrary attack on a crowd with firearms, Andre Breton once wrote, is the l \ simplest act of Surrealism. Furthermore, the dead donkey echoes the ass carcasses on the pianos in Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's Surrealist film, Un Chien andalou (1929). Surrealism assaulted dominant discourse on both aesthetic and political levels.As we shall see, Stroszek's rebellion is no less resonant. At first the Captain thinks the gunfire is from the (unseen) partisans. He soon learns that Stroszek is to blame and sends some soldiers to talk "sense" to him. But Stroszek's behavior is no longer conducive to the logic of the invading army. "I don't follow orders anymore," he sneers from the ramparts. He briefly holds an animal skull (the one that distracted him from sex with Nora) in front of his face. Seemingly intoxicated, he proclaims to take up the "cause of the people" and strips off his boots and 4 See Linda Williams, Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1981), p. 171. Williams' book, Figures of Desire, is devoted to this premise. For a link between Surrealism and Marxism, see Steven Kovacs, From Enchantment to Rage: The Story of the Surrealist Cinema (Rutherford, N. J.: Farleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 236-37. 54 uniform jacket. The soldiers are bewildered as their former comrade throws a handful of vegetation at them, saying they can keep the names of the plants. Finally, Stroszek rushes out of sight, saying that he will blow up the entire arsenal. Fearing for their lives, the Nazis rush off in the opposite direction. In the following scene, the Captain confers with a doctor and other town authorities so they might ward off impending disaster. The doctor tries to read Stroszek's madness, but cannot without sufficient information. The weakness of the authorities, both the Nazis and the co opted Greeks, is reflected by the weakness of their narrative. After Stroszek rants and raves from the ramparts, he can no longer be captured by the dominant discourse. The camera's previous access to the disturbed soldier allowed at least a rambling direction for the story. Now the camera cannot get near the insane soldier. At best, he appears in one shot as a speck on the landscape. Otherwise, he remains a visual and aural absence. The story has had enough troubles creating a strong progression for itself. Now it has lost the device that allowed it— however meagerly— to unfold: its protagonist. Without this major unifying element, the images seem less cohesive, as though they are groping for something to hold them to the dominant narrative. The voice-over comes to 55 the rescue and fills us in on what is happening to the absent one: Stroszek has challenged the orbit of the sun and vows to "set it on fire" with the fireworks that he and the others previously made to relieve their boredom. Of course, Stroszek's fireworks are useless for such a futile ambition. However, the film's fireworks sequence reveals again the limits of the discourse. From a distance, the camera records the flashing of the fireworks against the night sky. In the midst of these long shots, the camera jumps inside the fortress and captures the image of a chair catching fire. Stroszek remains nowhere to be seen. The camera can still transcend the barriers of distance and concealment, but Stroszek has transcended the camera. After the fireworks, we see the last shot of the film. The camera, resting on the back of a truck, records the road travelled as the tires kick dust into the air. We see little more than the horizon and the receding road. The narrator tells us: During the night, when Stroszek started another fireworks display, he was overpowered by his own men. He didn't make it to the [arsenal] depot— he was surrounded. In his rebellion, he had undertaken something titanic, for the enemy was far superior. Thus he had failed as miserably as all others of his kind. Once again, the opportunity for an exciting, dramatic spectacle arose, but the camera was not there. The plot —g seems to have been waiting for a moment like this throughout the film. Its absence from the screen begs our awareness of the discourse's limitations. The action is reduced to an ellipsis. The climax is reduced to an epilogue. We only know of Stroszek's defeat because the narrator says so, and we now know the political bias of the bodiless voice. This last sequence has been interpreted as the inability of the typical Herzog character, or "mankind," to change the forces around him or her. Dana Benelli, for example, says: "Signs of Life sympathetically observes Stroszek's rebellion, but his action is a personal revolt against the Cosmos, doomed to failure from the start. Thus a futile revolt halted by an insurmountable authority illustrates the futility of all dissent and the inevitable perpetuation of the status quo. This reading, however, ignores the fact that, although Stroszek is captured by the Germans, he remains uncaptured by the dominant discourse. In place of visual evidence of the protagonist, we are left with the kind of long take discouraged by Hollywood grammar. Stroszek's revolt has not failed completely. But one may still question the success of Stroszek's frail victory. Why is he not visually present in an alternate mode of discourse? Is this, then, not the mere ^ Dana Benelli, "The Cosmos and Its Discontents," Movietone News, No. 56 (4 November 1977), p. 16. 57 spiting of dominant discourse rather than subversion? These questions, however, privilege a narrative among the conflicting discourses that expects a climactic resolution. This is precisely the narrative tendency that Signs of Life criticizes. Instead of a one-dimensional, flag-waving victory for the alternative discourse, the struggle for non-dominant expression may be viewed as a process that, through recognition of its relationship to the dominant, is on-going. Yet another question remains: does Herzog's dependence on dominant discourse severely limit his leverage of expression and communication? The most important line in the film, in this context, slips by so stealthily that some may not notice it. As Stroszek sits by the dockside, communing with the Greek children, a young off-screen voice mutters a sentence in Greek. The words are conveniently translated for the German audience in subtitles: "Now that I can talk, what shall I say?" The child's question raises the issue of the media's appropriation of their subjects, both off-screen and behind the camera. Given the predispositions of dominant cinema, and of the dominant narrative level of Signs of Life , one may well wonder what is permitted to be recorded on film and how liberally it is to be received. This was— and remains— a vital issue for Herzog and his colleagues. Now that they had access to their medium, how could they work 58 within an industry determined by forces so unfavorable to alternative expression? Fortunately, Signs of Life poses the question in such a way as to indicate a possible answer. This scene of Stroszek and the children puzzles us. Who is this child, and why couldn't he or she previously speak? In retrospect, we realize that the off-screen child echoes the off-screen partisans and foreshadows the disappearance of Stroszek. The child's question also serves as counterpoint to the unseen narrator's matter-of- fact statements. The child's voice becomes a locus for issues of absence and issues of convention. The absence of essential elements, like the protagonist or an important character in a scene, raises our awareness of what is represented on film and what is not. In a manner of speaking, the absence becomes a presence. We realize the selectivity of what is allowed to appear on film and wonder why something like the cruelty of the Nazis (apart from the extermination of cockroaches) has no place in the narrative. This selectivity of the dominant discourse emerges as a limitation— as I have suggested throughout my description of the film. If the viewer extends this awareness to a social level, he or she may also question what is permitted to circulate as common knowledge. To the socially conscious German spectator of 1968, issues of 59 selectivity in German history and in everyday media would be especially important. The film's exploration of alternatives to dominant film practice is linked to historical awareness. Setting the story in the Nazi era immediately begs an uncomfortable consciousness for the West German./ Becker's attempts to translate the writings on the ruins suggests the search for a past and the difficulty of that quest for someone in the uniform of the conqueror. And Greece itself resonates with not only its own lavish history, but also with the classical heritage of all Western culture. Yet, Signs of Life does not equate the alternative discourse with Greece per se. For example, the film portrays the Greek authorities as complacently in league with the conquerors. Also, Nora's apparent acceptance of the dominant power and her availability to the dominant discourse (including her knowledge of German) contrasts dramatically to her husband's revolt. The potentiality for something different may lurk inside the uniform of even the cruelest conqueror, past or present. The German pianist (played by Florian Fricke, who, as leader of the musical ensemble Popol Vuh, scored many Herzog films) met by Stroszek in the backstreets of the town also represents the alternative discourse's lack of national allegiance. Doubling the protagonist through his own dishevelled uniform and through his own discomfort 6o supporting the conquering power, the pianist plays the music of Chopin, whom he describes as "malicious and unpredictable." Thus the musician indicates a (non-Greek) source of expression outside the more stringent visual codes of cinema. The music discloses a non-visual realm of discourse that is also non-verbal (in contrast to the verbal voice-over), which foreshadows Stroszek's disappearance, thereby associating his revolt with artistic ere at ion . When Stroszek disappears, threatening to bombard the island, the governing codes of the city break down. The adults desert the streets. The Gypsy dances for the children, as though they were all invulnerable to Stroszek's threats of destruction. The absurdity of urban life is revealed as the streets are emptied and the animals wander an environment useless to them. These strange visual juxtapositions give the viewer a critical eye to discern the artificiality of the ordinary urban setting and how it removes us from our animal origins. The order of the dominant discourse is connected to the order of the oppressive government; when one is ruptured, so is the other. During this breakdown of governing codes, the most perplexing— and perplexingly brief— infringement of dominant grammar creeps across the screen. The sequence comes and goes so quickly and subtly, that the inattentive 61 eye may regard it as merely a long cross-fade. The shots are as follows: (1) A long shot of the arsenal tower. The flag waves in the wind. Fade out. (2) Cut from the black of the fade to a tight shot, underexposed, of the dark ground. A barely distinguishable foot enters the top center of the frame. This lasts only a few frames. The exposure is changed on the final frame and the foot becomes highly visible. (3) Jump cut: the foot is now in the northwest quadrant of the frame. Same dark-to-light change on the final frame as in the previous shot. (4) Jump cut: view of the fortress wall seen for one frame before a rapid fade out lasting also one frame. Then it is light again. (5) Then it is night. In a long shot of the tower similar to (1), the fireworks begin. They explode over the arsenal, but only music is heard on the soundtrack. After this rupture of traditional transitional grammar, we are denied aural verification of the diegesis. During this sequence, the camera will jump inside the fortress without viewing the protagonist. Stroszek fails to achieve the ambition of his revolt, setting fire to the life-giving sun. But his rebellion does inflame the codes that give life to an illusory discourse, one that has for so long validated conquest and complacency. 62 The film distinguishes between the "signs of life" and the life to which they refer. Just as Stroszek tells the Nazis that they can keep the names of the plants, Signs of Life disowns the signs that pretend to be the things they represent. Acknowledging the artificiality of the filmic medium and filmic conventions through the rupture of dominant discourse, we are left with signs, not with life. The viewer's relationship to the film artifact permits new reception of image and sound discouraged by the dominant. One's senses are, instead, encouraged to scrutinize the pro-filmic and its tensions with naturalistic representation. The search for new meanings is seldom conclusive and thus difficult to verbalize. This not—so— mystical activity is heightened by the unknown possibilities one might discover for the first time. Stroszek is defeated, but the vision that Herzog unleashed perseveres. adequate language or adequate images, will fade away like dinosaursAlthough typical of Herzog's extreme and ambiguous pronouncements, this statement does add an extra dimension to Aguirre and Every Man for Himself that ultimately elucidates both the centrality of the viewer's role and the politicization of the director's work. Making greater use of dominant cinema, the two films break noticeably from Herzog's previous features — Signs of Life, Even Dwarfs Started Small, and Fata Morgana— wherein such elements as generic convention and promises of dramatic resolution are much harder to perceive. Not coincidentally, Aguirre and Every Man for Himself are also Herzog's first two features to acknowledge their co production by West German television. As mentioned before, television films were given the chance to reach larger audiences, to reach viewers not inclined to alternative cinemas or film festivals. But, early after television's introduction in the BRD, audiences had already come to have particular expectations. The predominance of American and American-style films on West German TV had created an ideal spectator not inclined to the subversive issues raised by the new filmmakers. Thus, the very fact that these two films were made for eventual ^ Werner Herzog interviewed by Lawrence O'Toole, "I Feel That I'm Close to the Center of Things," Film Comment, 15, No. 6 (November-December 1979), p. 48. 65 broadcast on the small screen necessitated a greater reliance on dominant conventions. By the early '70s, West German directors had several means to make films, but audience problems remained. To many directors, the choice was either to cater somewhat to Hollywood-oriented expectations or to become "avant-garde" filmmakers with little hope for exposure. At this time, Fassbinder began his examinations of Hollywood melodrama and film noir, examinations which permitted criticism of American cultural pervasiveness. Herzog chose a similar strategy: Early in the 1970s, Werner Herzog, speaking in an interview about Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), remarked: "I tried to bring off a larger project for the international film market. . . . I've made four or five feature films now, but have only reached peripheral markets or certain limited groups. That's not enough." In order to reach this larger public, Herzog went on to say, he resigned himself to the necessity of making Aguirre in a manner that "generates meaning through external action . . . Something is always going on." Made in Peru under arduous circumstances, Aguirre was shot (and premiered) in English, the lingua franca of its Polish-born star, Klaus Kinski, and its mostly Latin 2 Hans-Bernhard Moeller, "New German Cinema and Its Precarious Subsidy and Finance System," trans. Roland Reinhard, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 5, No. 2 (Spring 1980), p. 161. Moeller quotes a Herzog interview in Die Filmemacher: Per neue deutsche Film nach Oberhausen, eds. Barbara Bronnen and Corinna Brocher (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1973), pp. 16-17. The ellipses are Moeller's. 66 American supporting cast— a manifestation of not only Hollywood, but the USA's status as a world power. Furthermore, Herzog originally sought Hollywood backing for Aguirre; thus, he was apparently willing to deal with 3 studio intervention. Similarly, Every Man for Himself and God Against All evokes dominant cinema primarily through the Heimatfilm. The nineteenth —century German village and landscape, so frequently romanticized in the Nazi and post war cinemas, establishes the environment for Herzog's more A critical vision. But despite Herzog's reaching out to broader audiences, Aguirre never received regular theatrical distribution in West Germany, even though it met with resounding success abroad; and Every Man for Himself had to wait for foreign acceptance before it aroused domestic interest."* As of this writing, the two films are Herzog's most popular among the American art-house audience. Marsha Kinder recalls a discussion with Herzog on 7 November 1971 (following a screening of Fata Morgana for the Los Angeles International Film Exposition), in which the director said he unsuccessfully pitched Aguirre, then called only "The Wrath of God," to the major studios. According to Herzog, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stole his project's title for a Robert Mitchum movie. 4 Hans Gunther Pflaum and Hans Helmut Prinzler, Film in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1979), p. 34. Rentschler also elaborates on the "anti- Heimatfi1m" in West German Film, pp. 103-25, but does not mention Herzog's contributions. 5 Elsaesser, "Postwar," p. 13; and Corrigan, New German Film, p. 125. 37 Aguirre, the Wrath of God Gonzalo Pizarro commands an expedition through the unexplored jungles of South America in search of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold, but finds that he cannot penetrate the dense vegetation. Rather than risk the life of every conquistador at his command, Pizarro sends a smaller group down the Amazon River to look for signs of the legendary city. The group is lead by Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra), who, after setting out, finds the difficulty of his mission overwhelming. When Ursua commands his unit to turn back, his recalcitrant second-in-command, Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), seizes power, wounding Ursua in the process. Severing his allegiance to Spain, Aguirre forces a bumbling relative of the royal family, Don Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling), into the role of "Emperor of El Dorado." Much to Aguirre's anger, Guzman refuses to "execute" Ursua, allowing the wounded prisoner to live. The frightened conquistadors continue to float down the Amazon under Aguirre's tyrannical aegis. Along the river, they encounter elusive Indians and an abandoned village. Disease, hunger, and close quarters gradually work against the Spaniards. When Guzman is found dead, Ursua is finally executed, and Aguirre assumes full command of the starving and delirious soldiers. He now seems quite mad himself. g g - Calling himself the "Wrath of God," he leads his men into assaults by Indians. Aguirre is finally left alone on a raft of quiet corpses and scampering monkeys. "I am the Wrath of God!" he proclaims. "Who else is with me?" Privileging the conflict between Aguirre and Ursua, the above synopsis actually does a disservice to the narrative. Of no little importance to the story are a host of unmentioned characters: Ursua's mistress, Inez (Helena Rojo); the monk Gaspar de Carvajal (Del Negro); Aguirre's daughter, Flores (Cecelia Rivera), and his henchman, Perucho (Daniel Ades); the black slave, Okello (Edward Roland); and an Indian slave, Balthasar (actor uncredited). Also unrecounted, but especially important, is the conflict between the Spaniards and their inhospitable environment. After the conquest and sack of the Incan empire by Spain, the Indians [in their plight] invented the legend of El Dorado, a land of gold, located in the [untraversable] swamps of the Amazon tributaries. A large expedition of Spanish adventurers led by Gonzalo Pizarro set off from the Peruvian sierras in late 1560. The only document to survive from this lost expeditiog is the diary of the monk Gaspar de Carvajal. So begins the film: white titles against a red field. This fades to the image of tropical mountains shrouded in The English translation of the German text as it appears in the subtitles. Untranslated German phrases are bracketed . 69 mist. Liturgical-sounding music rises from the soundtrack. What at first seems to be the voices of a choir, but is actually the sound of a synthesizer, continues as the image shifts. Fields of muted color confront the eyes. Only as the shot tilts down does the viewer decipher the image: a seemingly endless line of men lumbering down a long mountain path and up another. The first recognizable people are the Indian slaves— the bright hues of their native dress piercing the soft colors of the background as their human forms pierce our confusion and penetrate our comprehension. This is Pizarro's expedition. Over this continuing spectacle, a voice speaks from the soundtrack: On Christmas Day, 1560, we reached the last pass of the Andes, and for the first time looked down at the legendary jungle. In the morning I read Mass, and then we descended into the clouds. This, one correctly assumes, is the voice of Carvajal as he writes in or reads from his diary, the origin of the narrative. The camera moves closer. The fumbling flow of humanity is more easily discerned. We view characters we will later come to know better. One slave carries a wheel strapped to his back. Another carefully carries a statuette of the Virgin Mary. The sequence ends when a cannon plummets to the ground, exploding and creating its own clouds. 70 After the initial disorientation of the first two shots, the plot is chronicled in the dominant— what some call the "suturing"— fashion. The medium-to-close shots of the explorers descending the mountain path are followed by a reverse angle, which creates a sense of spatial continuity and closes the diegesis around the anthropocentric realm of the visually privileged conquistadors. The linearity of their march promises a destination and allows one to expect a linearity of plot. But these people are out of place in these surroundings: the men's heavy armor and the women's cumbersome dresses are ridiculously unsuited to the tropical heat; and the wheel, that foundation of Western civilization and industrial progress, is useless on the mountain terrain and must be carried. The incongruity of the Spaniards and the environment manifests itself again during a brief reprieve from both the march and the progress of plot. In a close two-shot, Aguirre tries to persuade Pizarro not to go on. The commander insists, saying, "From here, it's all downhill." Aguirre looks contemptuously at his superior and repeats the sentence. Cut to a shot of the tumbling river. Because the previous shot showed the river behind Aguirre and Pizarro, one assumes that what occupies the screen is their point of view, thus a suturing reverse angle. But the viewer is troubled by the shot's composition: the head-on angle of 71 the splashing water, like Stroszek's windmills, fills the frame without directing the eye. Popol Vuh's synthesizers swell over the sound of the splashing. The shot lingers. As if this were not perplexing enough, a jump cut maintains the image but throws the camera's vision out of focus. One is allowed to consume the shot as an abstract design. The metallic strains of the synthesizer encourages scrutiny and contemplation. Narrative "progress" is confounded. Slowly, focus returns. The plotless pause punctuates the echoed words, "From here it's all downhill," and gives the viewer time to reflect on their ambiguity. Pizarro clearly meant that everything would now be easy. The commander's sentiment is challenged by the ensuing sequence and contradicted by the rest of the film. Aguirre accepts Pizarro's words but not their meaning. To Aguirre, it is all "downhill"— that is, disaster— for Pizarro and his command of the expedition. Where the opening sequence demonstrated the narrative power of words, this short segment demonstrates their vulnerability to subversion— and their treachery. Plot progression resumes as the Spaniards hack their way through the jungle. But the eye is now attuned to any detraction from dominant narrative. Drops of water on the camera lens, on the one hand, betray the presence of the cameramen (Francisco Joan, Orlando Macchiavello, and director of photography Thomas Mauch), but, on the other 72 hand, may be consumed as documentary-style verification of the scene's "reality." However, even if this enigmatic environment appears to be absorbed into the plot, disturbances continue. As Pizarro outlines his plans for the reconnaissance party, the camera introduces the characters to us while the commander's voice tells us who they are and why they have been chosen for this mission. The important Spanish characters are presented in tableaux, each central figure clearly in the foreground, supported by a descriptive mise- en-scene. The shot introducing Ursua and Inez particularly evokes the visual composition of early Renaissance painting. Ursua is seated in the foreground. To his right, in the background, stands his vassal, Armando (Armando Polanah), whose uprightness reinforces Ursua's military strength. Standing to his left, Inez comforts Ursua; she also occupies his foreground space. The praying Indian behind her (screen right) suggests her religious and domestic devotion. This and the other compositions of the Spaniards serve an explicitly narrative purpose: drawing from a dominant representational aesthetic, these images combine with Pizarro's expository words to detail character traits, expand the diegesis, and push the suturing narrative forward. But the shots of the Indians at rest do not so easily accommodate the plot. The slaves sit in no particular 73 pattern, their faces mostly unavailable to the camera. A tree or horse interrupts the camera's human orientation and throws its compositions of the Indians further out of balance, breaking the visual flow. The eye is encouraged to wander the frame rather than fasten onto an obvious center of attention, the narrow locus of a visual hierarchy. A discursive opposition has surfaced between the Spaniards and the New World, one that pits a dominant mode of representation against something different. The film's introduction of Flores intrigues the viewer as well: Aguirre kneels in the foreground, touching and admiring his young daughter as she sits back in her sedan chair. When Pizarro mentions her name, Aguirre pulls the sedan chair curtain in front of her and stares menacingly at the others. Flores is his possession. Her visual accessibility depends on his patriarchal whims. Thus a connection is made between seeing and the controlling hand of (patriarchal) authority. One may then reflect upon the other European woman in the film, Inez, and contrast her visual availability. Inez is visually and narratively attached to Ursua— indeed, she seems almost grafted onto him. In their expository shot, the background figure of the praying Indian is compared compositionally to Ursua's representative of might and authority, thus linking Ursua's and Inez's social roles. Inez's religiousness is echoed by the blue of her dress, the color and design of which recall traditional Renaissance depictions of the Virgin Mary. In retrospect, one associates earlier images of Inez carried in the sedan chair with the religious statuette carried by the Indian. Given religion's role as accomplice to the military invasion of South America (indicated in the opening and to become explicit later), combined with Aguirre's obscuring of Flores, one sees Inez bound by her socially and religiously ordained role as Ursua's lady. Like the slaves, Flores and Inez represent a conquered people. The inclusion of the two women in the story pressures the viewer's suspension of disbelief. But through the mingling of these characters, Herzog provides a multiplicity of discourses. One sees not only the intrusion of a European culture upon the New World, but also the ideological muffling of marginal voices within the invading culture. Pizarro sets forth his orders for the reconnaissance mission in a document. Once again, a piece of writing propels the plot forward. The viewer sees Pizarro signing the document with the aid of a stencil. Some spectators laugh at the commander's need for guidance to sign his name. This expedition is in the hands of someone who only feigns literacy. But more important, the stencil most 75 graphically illustrates the rigidity and constraint of the written mark. Once the reconnaissance mission is underway, Ursua's rafts are quickly opposed by the inhospitable landscape. Some of his men are caught in a circular current; trapped in a vulnerable position, they are killed— perhaps by natives, perhaps by an impatient Aguirre. A party sent to rescue the doomed men loses one of its members to a deadly trap. And during the night, a high tide washes away the rafts as the explorers lie sleeping on the embankment. The events force Ursua to command his troops to return. Now Aguirre (who has mysteriously changed his mind since his first line in the film) stages his mutiny. With his men gathered around him, Ursua reveals his decision to turn back— but only with great difficulty because of Aguirre's insubordinate heckling. The seditious second-in-command fills the air with words about Hernando Cortes and how his defiance of the crown led to the conquest of Mexico and its riches. When Ursua commands Aguirre to be shackled,va shot rings out, striking Ursua in the chest. Two conquistadors seize Armando, and a soldier taking up the sword for Ursua is shot and killed. When all is done, the men sit together, staring into space and pondering their fate in Aguirre's hands: "What do you think will happen now?" "What if there are rapids downriver?" "Who cares if it takes us nearer to El Dorado." "Do you 76 think they'll finish him [Ursua] off?" "Would you have the guts to stop them?" Of particular interest in the mutiny scene is the off screen marksman. One never sees the person who fires these decisive shots at Ursua and his loyal retainer. Aguirre's mutiny seems to have come out of nowhere. Earlier, we saw Perucho carry out Aguirre's orders by destroying the raft of dead men, thus taking care of one impediment to the journey. But the viewer has not been privileged to Aguirre's consolidation of power or to how he thought his revolt would succeed. To see so many of the soldiers without the "guts to stop them" makes one wonder what the secret of Aguirre's power is; ostensibly, it is not power of numbers. One might question why so many submitted so easily to the rebellion of an officer. Herzog presents us with a political fable but mystifies the immediate political foundations of Aguirre's revolt. The viewer learns nothing about the seizure of power. A more thorough examination of tyranny's roots might have served the subject better, especially given the historical resonance of the narrative. All along, actor Kinski's blonde hair and piercing blue eyes have contrasted greatly with the tawniness of his Latin American colleagues. The racial element of the film takes on an added meaning as we watch Aguirre's ruthless takeover. All doubt as to historical reference vanishes when the title 77 character says , "Now that we've eliminated the trouble makers , we need a leader." And the German word for "leader," of course, is Fuhrer. Herzog intriguingly evokes issues of fascism that broaden the perception of repressive autocracy throughout history without leaving Germany uncriticized. The very opening of the film— printed titles followed by conquerors "descending from the clouds"— is reminiscent of the introductory images of Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935). On one level, German history is portrayed through the Spanish conquest. Accusations that this detracts from Germany's historical awareness and responsibility run up against the film's mention of Philip II of Castile: the monarch, as the dialogue mentions, was a member of the Habsburg Empire, a dynasty that stretched across Europe from the German speaking world. The Spanish king is both the source of Third World aggression and the representative of a hierarchical governmental system that reaches across Europe. Fascism is not a uniquely national trait, although it usually draws upon a shallow nationalism to justify itself. Herzog illustrates an example of totalitarianism that is both specific in its reference to Hitler and general in showing the transnationalism of political oppression. The viewer must be aware of Germany's destructive role in 78 recent history, but Germany is not to be blindly blamed as the sole source of fascism. Furthermore, the forced "election" of Guzman as "Emperor of El Dorado" illustrates the appropriation of democracy by an absolute ruler. (Interestingly, Guzman is the one other major role played by a German-speaking actor.) Once Guzman is on his theatrical throne, Aguirre laughably legitimizes the new "government" with a document that claims to overthrow the King of Spain: . . . We have decided to put an end to the quirks of fate. We are forging history, and no fruits of this earth shall henceforth be shared. We rebel to the death. Our hands shall perish and our tongues dry up if this is not so. The House of Habsburg is overthrown. You, Philip the Second, are dethroned. By the power of this declaration, you are obliterated. In your place, we proclaim Don Fernando de Guzman as Emperor of El Dorado. Flee from hence, 0 King! [And may God have mercy on your soul.] Once the document is read aloud, the officers of the new empire strike a tableau for the camera, as though Aguirre expects this moment to be immortalized by some future monument. This shot recalls the Renaissance camera compositions of the expository sequence. Aguirre's revolt is not dissociated from the discourse of the Spanish invas ion. The monk Carvajal's complicity in Aguirre's totalitarian state is revealed through the corruption of language. Following the shooting of Ursua, Inez approaches 79 Carvajal and pleads for his assistance to oppose Aguirre. The monk informs her of his new allegiance to "the strong" (that is, whoever happens to be in power) through a corruption of Psalms 103: 15-16, decontextualizing the already ambiguous words until they signify nothing but a hollow pretext for his subsequent actions: Thou lettest man flow on like a river and Thy years know no end. As for man, his days are as grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more. As a representative of the church, Carvajal will sentence Ursua to death and will personally put to the sword an Indian who throws the Bible down to the ground. Carvajal and Aguirre clearly represent the oppressive collusion of church and state. Herzog criticizes Aguirre's rise to power through criticism of the conquistador's appropriation of speech and writing. Such expression is portrayed as the apparatus of oppression. Whoever holds the sword also holds the pen and controls the meaning of the words it writes. As tools of power, speech and writing must be respected, must be given their own reverent aura. Whoever shows disrespect for these signifiers of power criticizes the political power itself. Such disrespect must be punished. 80 As Aguirre gains power through the appropriation of language, Ursua loses his powers of language with his political powers. After he is shot, Ursua does not utter a single word; he refuses to submit himself to the language now co-opted by Aguirre's coup. The sequence of Ursua's trial expresses this most forcefully. Suddenly, words like "treason" and "conspiracy" take on meanings they did not have before the takeover. Inez's testimony shows the futility of trying to play by Aguirre's rules: Carvajal condescendingly dismisses her speech. Although he loses everything else, Ursua, through his silence, does not lose his integrity. The slave Balthasar represents what Ursua and Armando might have been like if they submitted to Aguirre's rule. Balthasar was once a prince to a native tribe. As he explains, his original name, Runo Rimac, means "he who speaks," and no one from his tribe was permitted to look directly at him. Losing his princely power, Balthasar also lost his name, his nominal exclusivity over language, and control of his visual subjugation. He now serves as the reluctant interpreter for the imperialists. One wonders if Ursua, even if his wound healed, would have fared any better . Aguirre appropriates what Jacques Lacan would call the symbolic, that psychoanalytic realm which presses the previously pre-conscious infant into subjecthood within the 81 patriarchal society. The subject, to gain the illusory ideal of having mastered his or her individual being, submits him- or herself, through the Oedipal complex, to an identity determined by the meaning society orchestrates through speech and writing.^ Thus one's identity as an individual is based on a series of relationships and constructs. In defining oneself in terms of symbolic meaning, one's "every instinctual thrust constitutes a danger, even though it should correspond to natural maturation. . . ."® Because subjectivity within the symbolic is a process of submission, one may view fascism as the ultimate manifestation of this submission. Fascism's further restriction of individuality to serve the state need not contradict this model: the subject is encouraged to construct him- or herself according to a predetermined patriarchal order. In this sense, the formation of the individual is not individualistic. The Spaniards' fascism ^ "To attempt to contain the meaning of 'Symbolic' within strict boundaries— to define it— would amount to a contradiction of Lacan's thought, since he refuses to acknowledge that the signifier can be permanently bound to the signified." (J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Donald Nieho1 son-Smith [New York: Norton, 1973], p. 440.) This opens the concept of symbolic to a variety of "definitions" and connotations. My own, above, will serve the present discussion, but is never intended as definitive. 8 ' Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 5. B2 is associated with the symbolic: both are indicated and carried by speech and writing. Because the film details a protagonist (Aguirre) and a context (the Spanish conquest) that are based on and within the symbolic, it is only logical that the film begins with written titles and utilizes voice-overs (based on writing within the diegesis) to continue its anthropocentric plot. Herzog certainly sees a connection between the symbolic, fascism, and dominant cinema— although he would never use these terms. Even if this connection is simplistic, it still casts a compelling light on the dominant ideology that buttresses dominant cinema. Kaja Silverman describes the relationship between the viewer's submission to "seamless" linear narrative and the individual's submission to subjectivity: Herzog "suggests that subjectivity is in effect the dominant cultural narrative, a narrative which it is incumbent upon each individual to live through to the end of a linear and causal fashion." Thus, the plot-oriented "narrative completion" of dominant cinema functions as a symbolic discourse. Like the symbolic (and through the symbolic), dominant cinema is, to Herzog, a narrow and restricting means of expression that privileges the narrowness and restriction of culturally sanctioned ways of seeing. 9 Silverman, "Kaspar," p. 74. 83 Dominant cinema privileges social hierarchy through visual hierarchy and the finite world of the diegesis through finite filmmaking conventions. Although it usually follows the visual "grammar" of dominant cinema, the film still frustrates rigorous closure on many levels. For example, lengthy shots of the landscape are inserted although they do not appear to advance the plot. The men also comment a few times about an unknown thing that Ursua conceals in his hand, and although attempt is made to pry his hand open, one never learns what the mysterious object is. Furthermore, in a scene where the Spaniards interrogate a native as to the origin of his gold medallion, his answer remains untranslated by Balthasar; the entire motivation for Aguirre's symbolic narrative is strangely subverted. These small disturbances of the film's seamlessness remind one of the earlier resistances to dominant narrative noted above. As in Signs of Life, Herzog counters the ideology of the invaders in Aguirre with an environment not conducive to their preconceptions. So, once again, the rupture of the imperialistic dominant cinema signals the filmmaker's opposition to the violence of invasion and suggests realms of expression otherwise ignored. The rupture of dominant cinema thus serves the same function as the rupture of the 84 symbolic by its opposite, the imaginary; the unconscious realm that the symbolic cannot encompass. Writing specifically about Herzog's later film Stroszek (1977, whose title character bears no overt relation to the protagonist of Signs of Life), Rentschler includes an observation concerning all the director's work: The circle is the informing structure in Herzog's cinema, the objective correlative to his pessimistic ilk of Romanticism. The circle connotes a trapped life without purpose, a human existence without meaningful activity, merely an eternal repetition of the same, motions that leave us time-bound captives, subject to the whims of inscrutable higher powers. At best one can rebel against this symbolic order and for a moment achieve a purified, ecstatic, and heightened sense of being. Ultimately, though, the typical Herzogian protagonist^js overcome by inexorable and mightier elements. Leaving aside his conclusion for the time being, one should only apply Rentschler's remarks to each film in light of its relation to the linearity of dominant plot progression. In the case of Aguirre, visual circularity and narrative linearity function as oppositions . The landscape first frustrates Ursua's party by catching one of the rafts in a circular current. Toward the end of the picture, as disease and delirium take over Aguirre's raft, the last line Carvajal writes in his journal is: "We are going round ^ Eric Rentschler, "How American Is It: The U. S. as Image and Imaginary in German Film," Persistence of Vision, No. 2 (Fall 1985), p. 10. 35 in circles." And then there is the film's final shot, which encompasses Aguirre and the raft in a powerful orbit. In each instance, circularity frustrates the progression of the dominant narrative. Of the three examples, the first ends with the escape of two Indians from the Spaniards' narrative, and the remaining two frame the complete falling apart of plot and narrative closure. The final decay of dominant narrative follows the jungle's remittent challenges to the search for El Dorado. As the end of the film approaches, Guzman is strangled off screen (presumably by Aguirre), and consequently, Ursua is executed. Now free of her domestic identity, Inez marches into the jungle and out of Aguirre's murderous narrative. The strange sight of her elaborate Spanish gown against the primeval wilderness evokes a disquieting poignancy. There is nowhere for Inez to go— except into the imaginary. Later, when Aguirre's scouts report that her footprints could not be followed far into the jungle, one concludes that she reached her destination. Now, floating on the confines of their raft, the surviving conquistadors and slaves are sick with fever and hunger. When Carvajal mentions this to Aguirre, the self- proclaimed Wrath of God replies with an egotistical speech. As his voice-over informs us, Carvajal believes that Aguirre is leading his men toward a destructive illusion. 86 The literal destruction of the conquistadors commences when Aguirre's Indian flute player (Hombrecito), whose talents had heretofore been appropriated as spectacle by the imperialists, stops his forced musicianship and stares directly into the camera. Spears and arrows from the embankment pick off the crew one by one. (The Indian slaves vanish from the raft, but one never sees how.) The symbolic power of the plot is itself destroyed when Carvajal runs out of ink (which is drunk by a delirious soldier), thereby ending his diary and its narrative authority. The monk's narrativization of the landscape, like the invisible narrator in Signs of Lif e , helped to appropriate the strange environment into the conquering story. Carvajal was aided in this plot-oriented enterprise by dominant cinema. But now, with the breakdown of the conquering power, the interrogation of the image (ignored by dominant cinema) creeps into the dialogue. "I see a ship with sails, in a tree-top. And from the stern hangs a canoe," says Okello, the black slave, as he stares skyward. Without bothering to look, Carvajal condescendingly chides him: "You imagine that ship. No flood tide can rise that high. We all have fever. It's a hallucination. I've heard such things happen to exhausted men." But the shot that appears over the monk's speech shows exactly what Okello described. This scene most explicitly reveals the 87 long-implied divergence between the spoken, explanatory word and the startling image. The fact that this troubling vision was seen by an oppressed black character and "explained away" by a European character who represents the ideology of religion illustrates the challenge to dominant perception by those it dominates. But Aguirre, upon seeing and confirming Okello's vision, shouts, "Shut up, monk! We'll get that ship and sail to the Atlantic." Aguirre may share Okello's desire to see unusual images, but he only wants to appropriate them for his misguided narrative of conquest. The ship remains in the tree. Following Carvajal's logic, Okello denies all that is visible around him. He looks at the ship: "That is no ship." He looks at the forest: "That is no forest." An arrow strikes him in the leg; he says without flinching: "That is no arrow. We only imagine the arrows because we fear them." On an extradiegetic level, Okello is right: these are only images of the things he describes. Okello denies the validity of the images, their "reality" within the diegesis, and he disconnects them from their verbal signifiers. His lines may remind the viewer of Rene Magritte's 1929 painting, Thd Treason of Images (La Trahison des images), a large canvas of a pipe with the words, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," below it; the "pipe" is a representation in pigment, as the "arrows" in Aguirre are 88 photochemical representations. But after Okello's words, Lope de Aguirre rushes to the cannon and shouts, "The arrows are real!" With this reassertion of the valid diegesis, he fires. The explosion of the phallic weapon harkens back to the threat of castration that hovers over the Oedipalized subject. Firing the cannon also validates the diegesis aurally. Throughout the film, silence on the soundtrack has signalled the presence of the Indians. Silence interrupts the extension of the diegesis onto the soundtrack, the synchronous sound of which supports the illusion of the image's reality. Aguirre and the conquistadors try to occupy the soundtrack— usually with the sound of weapons— hence, asserting their violent dominance over it. Aguirre unites patriarchal violence with the unquestioning realism of dominant cinema. Despite his actions, Aguirre is soon the raft's sole survivor— his madness heightened, one assumes, by witnessing his daughter's death, a death he refuses to acknowledge. In a series of jump cuts, he staggers around the raft. His own delirious ravings now occupy the voice over, as if to recoup the symbolic narrative cohesion now lost to Carvajal's writing. His only pro-filmic witnesses (for the hand-held, jump—cut camera is now a presence) are several spider-monkeys. "I, the Wrath of God, will marry my own daughter and with her I'll found the purest dynasty 89 the earth has ever seen. Together we shall rule the whole of this continent," he raves, giving the viewer one more historical reference. Aguirre seizes a monkey in his fist. "We'll endure," he tells it. "I am the Wrath of God." And throwing the creature aside, he asks, "Who else is with me?" The puniness of his power is revealed in the last shot: the camera rushes toward the floating figure and circles the corpse-strewn raft. Not only does this last shot begin from an angle outside the bounds of shot/counter shot, but in circling the raft, reveals the wake of the boat carrying the camera. By acknowledging the extradiegetic origin of the last shot, the film also acknowledges the artificiality of the diegesis and the restricting bounds of its seeming validity. As if this were not enough, the ensuing credits begin with an unusual recognition of the spectator: "You saw [Sie sahen] Klaus Kinski in Aguirre, the Wrath of God . . ." Much commentary has circulated about Herzog's fascination with the character of Aguirre, a fascination that extends behind the camera and into the director's wish to approximate the conquistador's reckless quest through the act of filmmaking under reckless circumstances. In such criticism, the commentator never mentions the economic difficulties of making an expensive-looking film on a 90 jungle location for the equivalent of $300,000. The "re creation" of Aguirre's conquest behind the camera is— at least in part— the only way Herzog believed that this kind of movie could get made on West German film money (which one filmmaker described as "too little to live on and too much to die on").^ In this respect, Herzog's endangering the actors and breaking Peruvian law are as much a means of professional survival as fodder for publicity. Little, however, has been written about the film's disdain for its eponymous character. While the dominant narrative includes cathartic identification with Aguirre (applause sometimes greets his nonchalant reaction to the success of his takeover), the rupturing of the imperialistic plot criticizes the narrowness of his vision and the futility of his quest. By the film's last shot, the viewer may stare in amazement at this now-pathetic figure, wondering how identification with him was ever possible. Herzog does not omit viewer identification and its undoing from his criticism of dominant cinema. Aguirre , the Wrath of God is ultimately biased against its own title character, favoring, instead, the destruction of the discourse that provides his narrative. Quoted by Elsaesser, "Postwar," p. 13. Herzog discusses the difficulties of Aguirre's production in Murray, "Werner Herzog: Interview," pp. 317-20. 91 Aguirre manifests the symbolic/imaginary structure of the Lacanian subject. Through his criticism of the symbolic discourse associated with dominant cinema, Herzog suggests an imaginary discourse, as it were— imaginary because of its opposition to the symbolic. The imaginary discourse does not define itself in concrete terms because the very act of definition is symbolic. As boundaries are yet another symbolic construct, Herzog implies that the possibilities outside socially imposed limitations are boundless. To indicate what lies beyond, he pressures and ruptures the symbolic limits of dominant cinema. Herzog's imaginary discourse provides a means by which the seemingly "natural" reveals itself to be a construct. Questioning assumptions of realism, the spectator is invited to look beyond everyday assumptions of reality. Of all Herzog's characters, no one represents the imaginary discourse more fully than Kaspar Hauser. Every Man for Himself and God Against All Every Man for Himself and God Against All brings the struggle for alternate ways of seeing out of the exotic environment and into the quiet of nineteenth-century Germany. Indeed, it is precisely in that quiet, in that complacent stillness, that Herzog locates a symbolic suppression of the imaginary. What would, in the 92 Heimatfilm, have served as peaceful pastoral surroundings for lovers in Lederhosen, emerges as a cryptofascistic realm that demands conformity; and those whom it cannot conform, it kills. Every Man for Himself may be seen as the structural inverse of Aguirre. While the conquistador film depicts a symbolic-oriented protagonist in an imaginary environment, Every Man for Himself follows an imaginary-oriented protagonist in a symbolic environment. Once again, narrative issues become central. Try as they might, the German townspeople never get Kaspar to conform to their narrativizat ion of his existence. This pervasive narrativizing atmosphere, and Kaspar's resistance to it, establishes the film's major conflict. Due to the thoroughness and extensiveness of Silverman's article (see Introduction) and Corrigan's chapter in New German Film (pp. 121-43), my discussion of Every Man for Himself shall be less detailed. Silverman has already explored the psychoanalytic issues of Herzog's tale. She explains that, rather than submit himself to a socially condoned identity inscribed within the stultifying process of symbolic meaning, the film's protagonist embarks instead on a much more original writing project, one which accommodates not only "live" signifiers, alternate narrative forms and autobiography, but a different sort of personal scenario. Those "anti-writings" pose too large a 93 challenge to the dominant narrative tr^ition and one by one are neutralized or effaced. Silverman investigates the imaginary/symbolic dichotomy supporting the film through her discussion of (imaginary) Being and (symbolic) Meaning: "Being" is the name given by Lacan to a pre- linguistic instinctual economy in which needs spontaneously arise and are capable of complete fulfillment, provided the means for that fulfillment are at hand. "Meaning," on the contrary, implies not only a system of signification closed to that important [sic]. Subjectivity is thus the transition from meaningless satisfaction to meaningful dissatisfaction. The subject finds his or her cultural position only within the field of signification and desire, ^ alienation from instinctual gratification. Subverting the symbolic through the imaginary qualities within the individual, Herzog once again crafts a fable about hegemony and its rupture. As the film begins, a man (Bruno S.) is seen harnessed to the floor of a cellar. He slovenly eats scraps of food and childishly plays with a wooden horse as if he had been confined all his life. An "Unknown Man" (Hans Musaus) enters the cellar and forcefully teaches the prisoner to write "Kaspar Hauser." One day the Unknown Man carries the prisoner to a field where he is taught to walk. 1 2 Silverman, "Kaspar," pp. 78-79. 13 Ibid. , pp. 79-80. 94 The Unknown Man then abandons his charge in the middle of a town (nineteenth-century Nureiburg). The townspeople regard the man with distant contempt. Able only to write "Kaspar Hauser," he is given that as a name and locked in a prison tower, where the police and town officials marvel at his incomprehension of the world. When Kaspar's stay in prison becomes a burden to the town treasury, he is forced to exhibit himself as a circus attraction. But he escapes and is taken home by one of the circus patrons, Herr Daumer (Walter Ladengast). In the Daumer household, Kaspar learns to express himself. Displaying a mind that is capable of insightful and unusual thoughts, he confounds two self- righteous pastors (Enno Patalas and Elis Pilgrim) and contradicts a pedantic logician (Alfred Edel). The Unknown Man unexpectedly returns one day and tries to kill Kaspar. Kaspar recovers, only to be fatally injured by an unseen assailant. On his deathbed, he recounts one of his many visions: a caravan, lost in the desert, is saved from following a mirage by a blind berber; tasting the sand, the berber knows the true direction of their destination. Later, doctors perform an autopsy on Kaspar's corpse. They discover a few minor abnormalities of the brain and liver. Delighted with the doctors" findings, the town clerk (Clemens Scheitz), who has been writing down every official statement ever made about Kaspar, exclaims that the dead 95 man's peculiar state of mind can now be explained away. He will write the authoritative report on the matter. Every Man for Himself does not start with the story, but with shots of pastoral observances: two men in period dress (later revealed to be Kaspar and the Unknown Man) rowing a boat, a woman staring at the camera from a river bank. Meanwhile, the scratched recording of an operatic aria is heard on the soundtrack, vaguely connecting the 14 images to each other. A short narration of Kaspar's story follows in silent titles— white letters against a black background. Then, one sees a wind-blown field of grain stretching to the horizon. After a moment, a quotation appears on the screen in white letters: "Can't you hear the horrible screaming [Schreien] all around us, the screaming men call silence?" Following this scene are the first shots of Kaspar in the cellar: he eats, drinks, and plays with his wooden horse. Soon, the Unknown Man enters the room. Placing paper and pen in front of Kaspar, the black-cloaked figure utters the first words of dialogue: "Writing" ("Schreiben"). The German-speaking viewer might be struck by the similarities between the words "screaming" (Schreien) and "writing" (Schreiben). As if to emphasize 14 The most recently circulating prints, including the videocassette edition, omit this sequence. This seems to be due to the ragged condition of the master print rather than any artistic reconsiderations by Herzog. 96 this, in his next line, the Unknown Man breaks the second word in half: "Schrei-ben" (Schrei being the root word for Schreien). Thus, the very first spoken word in the film, put in the mouth of a threatening authority figure, is linked to the silent "screaming" of the previous sequence. This metaphorical screaming, this sound which is "all around us" but cannot be heard, suggests the concept of ideology. Particularly as explored by Louis Althusser, ideology is the set of relations between human beings and the material requirements of their existence— a relationship that, to perpetuate itself, obscures its artificiality so as to appear natural. Thus the silence of Every Man for Himself is fundamentally different from that of Aguirre: the imaginary silence of the jungle indicates the limits of dominant discourse, while the symbolic silence of Germany perpetuates the dominant ideology. Every Man for Himself seeks to provide an awareness of the usually unsensed ideology; it seeks to make the screaming heard. The link between "screaming" and writing acknowledges the latter as an ideological device. The violence administered by the Unknown Man during the writing and walking "lessons" manifests on an overt level the violence inherent in the cultural formation of the subject, a violence perpetuated both intentionally and unintentionally by the citizens of Nuremburg. In other words, Kaspar 97 exchanges the physical imprisonment of the cellar for the ideological imprisonment of the town and its civilization. This is underscored visually as the stone streets and houses of Nuremburg echo the stones of the cellar. Not coincidentally, the cellar acts as the visual initiator of the plot, a role unfulfilled by the unconnected images of the opening. As Kaspar interacts with the Unknown Man, shot/counter shot and the stageline begin their standard roles as conveyors of the closed, seamless story. But when Kaspar is carried out of his cellar to a meadow, the shock of the bright green colors reminds the viewer of the film's lush opening, reminds one that the film's beginning has not been diegetically accounted for. Following the Unknown Man's harsh walking and talking lessons, Kaspar lies almost face-down in the grass, his black-cloaked jailer behind him. In the stillness of this scene, a classical vocal melody (Orlando di Lasso's Requiem) emerges on the soundtrack. Immediately following this intriguing image, the camera captures the surrounding countryside in grainy and unusually framed shots. These images might represent Kaspar's fascination with the new environment around him, but the camera does not secure these jumbled views within his gaze. Later, when the film depicts images that describe Kaspar's dreams, 98 one may retrospectively regard the grainy shots as Kaspar's mindscreen.* ^ One may also regard them as an impediment to the plot. Their graininess, their lack of a reverse-angle field, and their expandability to the linear narrative detract from the diegesis that has closed around Kaspar. Through his mindscreen, the character manifests his allegiance to the imaginary, defying the symbolic and the violence of its implementation. Herzog's conscious bifurcation of the imaginary and the symbolic explains his omission of Kaspar's voice-over, which is present in the published screenplay but absent in the finished film.^ Kaspar has four other visions that follow this sequence: (1) a panoramic shot of the Caucasus (in enlarged Super 8 footage); (2) the brief shot of a cloudy sky dominating a flat, barely visible landscape (presumably this is what Kaspar imagines following the first attempt on his life); (3) a long line of people (some in modern dress) marching wearily up a hill— where death awaits them; and ^ "There are . . . three familiar ways of signifying subjectivity within the first-person narrative field: to present what a character says (voice-over), sees (subjective focus, imitative angle of vision), or thinks. The term I propose for this final category is mindscreen, by which I mean simply the field of the mind's eye." Bruce F. Kawin, Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978), p. 10. 1 6 See Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Agains t All, in Screenplays, trans. Alan Greenburg and Martje Herzog (New York: Tanam, 1980), esp. pp. 99-110. 99 (4) the deathbed vision of the Sahara (also enlarged from Super 8), where a caravan is almost engulfed by the desert. In all these mindscreens , nature is visually dominant. But nature is not, in itself, an opposition to the cruelty of the symbolic: in one scene, the camera dwells on a heron devouring a frog; nature is capable of its own cruelty. The film offers nature as a signifier of a dialectical opposition, a source for cultivating alternatives to the symbolic, but does not confuse these visual signals with the opposition itself. In this way, nature is not idealized. Given that Kaspar's visions detail primarily pastoral settings and that a pastoral meadow was a stimulus for his visions, the film insinuates a pastoral/synthetic opposition: the synthetic (as represented by the cellar and the small-minded town) offers only confinement, which the pastoral challenges. Although the published screenplay refers to the entry into Nuremburg as "Kaspar's birth,"*7 the sequence in the meadow is more precisely Kaspar's admittance into the world. When the Unknown Man drops Kaspar from his shoulders, they both fall backwards to the ground. The natal resonance of this image is echoed when Kaspar says later, "It seem to me that my coming into the world was a hard fall [ein harter Sturz] Kaspar's 17 Ibid . , p . 109 . 100 deliverance from the synthetic, symbolic womb of the cellar into a pastoral, visually oppositional environment naturalizes his struggle against the synthetic, symbolic ideology of Nuremburg. This scene is a long-delayed encounter with a world to which Kaspar actually belongs. As Aguirre carries his symbolic world into the imaginary wilderness, so Kaspar carries his imaginary wilderness into the symbolic world. Both Aguirre and Kaspar try to appropriate the oppositional surroundings into their own story-making activity. Aguirre's attempt fails miserably because he gains no awareness or enlightenment from the jungle, which he sees as a mere passive complement to his linear quest. By absorbing some elements of the symbolic (writing, speech) and integrating them into his imaginary awareness, Kaspar achieves a tenuous reconciliation between dominant expression and the fringe discourses it usually discourages. This is reflected by the film when Kaspar is no longer passive to the story-making actions of the townspeople. Whenever Kaspar physically acts upon a living thing or object, one sees little or no connection to an ultimate climactic event. These smaller events seem to stop the accumulation of incidents which propound the narrative trajectories established earlier (Kaspar's identity, integration into society, meeting his death, and so on). As Kaspar plays with a bird or practices on the 101 piano, the viewer is more attuned to the smaller "climaxes" within the shot. The viewer may find pleasure in the infinitesimal elements within the frame that do not lead to narrative conclusions— a tendency undermined by the film's American title, The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, which futilely presents the protagonist as a puzzle to be solved. Such frustration of dominant cinema inevitably refers back to the materiality of the medium and the illusionism of its image-making— exemplified in Every Man for Himself by the swirling photochemical grain of the desert mindscreen. The film extends this awareness into the diegesis when Kaspar, gazing at his reflection in a barrel of water, reaches beyond the likeness and into the substance of the water itself. With this single gesture, Kaspar discloses the flimsiness of the illusion and creates a new image. Events such as this indicate a possible course for dominant cinema away from its usual grandiose spectacles, away from the tyranny of plot. Perhaps the director's intention to fuse the dominant and the non-dominant was signalled as early as the shot of the billowing rye field: the coming together of imaginary vision and written titles. Another coming together of dominant and non-dominant is represented through the contributions of experimental filmmaker Klaus Wyborny. Responsible for photographing most of Kaspar's mindscreens, Wyborny also maintains his own small avant-garde audiences. 102 Including a filmmaker even more marginal than himself in the crew of Every Man for Himself, Herzog extends the coming together of two types of cinema into the production of the film. But the insistence of the dominant discourse violently denies any partnership with its opposite: the Unknown Man returns, and in killing Kaspar, puts an end to the living embodiment of these possibilities. The Wrath of God Against All Both Aguirre and Kaspar face destruction at the end of their films. The conquistador is all but physically destroyed as the remains of his would-be empire crumble around him. Kaspar is actually seen on the morgue slab, his body picked over by scavenging surgeons. The symbolic protagonist is thus destroyed by the imaginary environment, and conversely, the imaginary protagonist is destroyed by the symbolic environment. But this small inverted similarity betrays a greater difference. In the last shot of Every Man for Himself, the town clerk walks down a village street, away from the camera. On the soundtrack, the scratched recording of The Magic Flute that opened the film is heard again. The shot is held for a perplexingly long time. The dominant narrative closed with the death of Kaspar, but now something else occupies the screen, something outside the resolution of 103 narrative closure. The shot lingers, provoking the viewer to both absorb and interrogate the image: Why is this taking so long? What else is there to look for? The constant scrutiny of the shot leads to the awareness of the image as a f ilmed image and not as an enunciation simply to be accepted. The scratches on the soundtrack remind one of the material limits of the recording device and, by inference, the limits of both story and discourse. This is another example of the non-dominant, imaginary discourse that the protagonist represented. Kaspar dies in the story, but unlike Aguirre, his discourse continues. The persistence of the imaginary discourse in this last shot implies the limits of the town clerk's prospective history of Kaspar. The challenges that the foundling's very existence posed to Nuremburg will surely be effaced by the clerk's sycophancy to authority. (In the course of the film, the clerk only recorded what the authorities had to say about Kaspar, not what Kaspar himself had to say.) Like Carvajal, the clerk functions as the monitor of the symbolic discourse, the one who twists what cannot be accounted for until it fits as neatly as possible into established convention. When we remember that the protagonist of the film is a non-fictional person, we are confronted with the monitoring of history, with the interpretation of real events and the purposes to which it is employed. 104 Both Lope de Aguirre (c. 1518-1561) and Kaspar Hauser (c. 1812-1833) are historical figures. Herzog has used actual people and actual events — those left to us through documentation— to textualize vital issues; but he has also significantly altered history to do so. Aguirre, for example, places its title character in the company of not only Ursua and Guzman (non-fictional explorers whom the historical Aguirre is believed to have murdered), but also Pizarro and Carvajal (two other non-fictional figures whose South American expedition preceded that of the other three by almost 20 years). Furthermore, the film never mentions Aguirre's arrest and execution by the authorities. As for Kaspar, his mysterious appearance in Nuremburg in 1828, his difficulty fitting into society, and his equally mysterious murder have provided a wealth of material for Romantic 18 poets and social critics. Here, too, Herzog changes the recorded facts in favor of his own imaginary vision. The director thus puts himself in a position close to the clerk and Carvajal: as the monitor of discourse whose interpretation is no less prejudiced and whose account is no more reliable. Yet, because discursive issues are foregrounded in the two films, historical authenticity is questioned, not ^ See Jan-Christopher Horak, "Werner Herzog's Ecran Absurde," and Ellis Finger, "Kaspar Hauser Doubly Portrayed," Literature/Film Quarterly, 7, No. 3 (July 1979), pp. 223-43. 105 claimed. Unlike the "unauthored" and preordained narrative trajectories of Hollywood historical recreations, Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Every Man for Himself and God Against All acknowledge the limits of their own symbolic constructions (both of which are first suggested by the symbolic "God" of both titles). The latter film even extends this awareness into its main narrative by casting a middle-aged man in the role of a teenager. Ultimately, the two films act against a blind acceptance of history: the past is usually constructed in a way to uphold the status quo; by questioning the construction, one may begin to unravel both the past and the present. Following the similarities between Signs of Life, Aguirre , and Every Man for Himself, one may proceed to discuss the friction between symbolic and imaginary as a motivating function— not merely as an underlying psychoanalytic structure— of Herzog's canon. His clear bias in favor of the imaginary discourse colors his perceptions of his characters: whether or not they, too, advocate a worldview opposed to the insidious sameness— and hence, destructiveness— of Western society. Herzog feels 19 closest to Kaspar, the protagonist allied to the imaginary discourse from beginning to "end." Aguirre, representing the symbolic discourse, is ultimately 19 Franklin, New German Cinema, p. 122. 106 alienated from the discourse advocated by the film. Corporal Stroszek embodies the shift in discursive allegiance that the director wishes his audience to make. Herzog's representatives of the imaginary discourse who dwell within a dominant culture— Kaspar and Stroszek— suggest that one may find something new within oneself, rather than always seeking it in the unfamiliar or foreign. And when Herzog turns his stories to foreign lands, he challenges the invisibility of Western culture. His fascination for the non-Western disparages its usual portrayal in dominant cinema as the colorful but harmless backdrop for white protagonists. Herzog even suggests an affinity with Third World cinema through his casting of Brazilian director Ruy Guerra in Aguirre and through the title Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is taken from a line in Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's Brazilian film Macunaima (1969). But Elsaesser argues that Herzog's affinity is stronger with the tyrannical protagonists of Nazi cinema than with the revolutionary fervor of the Third World. Elsaesser calls Aguirre "Kaspar's dream side": the conquistador is the dictatorial leader that the foundling dreams to become. In Kaspar's vision of the desert, the blind berber takes control of the caravan in a manner not 107 incomparable to Aguirre's commandeering of the ^ •-• 20 expedition . The visionary is thus to be distrusted, lest illogical images, masquerading as truth, lead unquestioning followers into the jaws of fascism. But the duel of discourses in Herzog's work draws great distinction between the leadership of Aguirre and that of the berber. To quote Silverman: The old berber, who addresses his followers as "sons," clearly represents an alternative to the symbolic father, countering the latter's repressive and externally extended gaze with his own tolerant and inward vision. He leads the caravan not to the end of its journey, but to its beginning. And where others, most notably the black-cloaked figure, insist on difference, he finds only continuity. His open-ended narrative denies traditional boundaries, such as mountain ranges or conclusions. Finally, I would like to note that the [caravan's] journey to the city in the North is made "without discussion" [not translated in the English subtitles]. Signification cannot survive the loss of different^ and the breakdown of narrative coherence. Conversely, Aguirre's violent seizure of leadership is afterwards documented in a ridiculous and ineffectual written declaration. In search of narrative closure, Aguirre leads his men toward an illusion. Aguirre This issue was discussed by Thomas Elsaesser in a presentation to the Critical Studies division of the School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, on 6 April 1984 in Los Angeles, California. 21 Silverman, "Kaspar," p. 91. 108 ultimately kills his own plot-oriented discourse, while the ensuing titles, in their acknowledgement of the spectator, continue an alternate discourse. Aguirre's tyranny seeks to justify itself in the written word— thus perpetuating its symbolic baggage— but the caravan's acceptance of the berber's directions is part of a discourse striving for the eventual breakdown of leadership. One sees now the urgency of Herzog's quest for "adequate images." The images we have grown used to— those in magazines, on television, in advertisements, all around us— are symptoms of a cultural inscription based on the violent suppression of the subject. If humanity reaches extinction, Herzog seems to say, it will not necessarily be through optical starvation; but the numbing of our visual powers condones the belligerent ideology that deadens and threatens our existence. Herzog counters each story's potential pessimism with the optimism of the discourse. The interaction between viewer and film on the discursive level is the overriding and exhilarating purpose of Herzog's work. The defeat or destruction of the visionary protagonist within the story acknowledges the persistence of the symbolic and alerts the viewer to the constant struggle to see beyond cultural inscription. But the films' real protagonists are in the audience, those members who continue to question their 109 perceptions outside the cinema. The death of the seer is not inevitable. 110 IV. The Mirage Opposition between the symbolic and imaginary discourses proposes not only a criticism of ideology, but the desire to go beyond cultural boundaries. However, the pervasiveness of the symbolic, as both a means of learning and an avenue of ideological placement, begs the question of how one perceives outside culture. Furthermore, the role of film as a carrier of dominant culture compromises the medium's ability to truly change perception. These issues are present in all of Herzog's work, but they find their most powerful expression in the director's most unusual film, Fata Morgana. Although made before Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Every Man for Himself and God Against All, Fata Morgana is best understood in light of Herzog's subsequent work as the purest example of his imaginary discourse. In Herzog's other films, the rupturing power of the images is focused around or against a strong central existent (whether an individual, incident, or issue) connected to the symbolic discourse of a documentary or dramatic tradition. Because of the absence of such an existent, Fata Morgana seems the most disjointed, the most difficult to follow of all Herzog's work. In its relentless refusal to copy dominant convention, and in its uninterrupted interrogation of symbolic constraints, Fata Morgana asks what we can learn from the imaginary discourse itself. Herzog is one of the few directors to successfully balance a career as an acclaimed dramatic filmmaker with one as an important documentarian. Even though he challenges standard reception to both features and documentaries, he never seems to completely overthrow the two categories— or regimes, to use Christian Metz's term. Each Herzog documentary seems firmly ensconced in a documentary tradition, just as every drama utilizes histrionic codes associated with the feature film. Categorizing each Herzog film, one has no difficulty distinguishing documentary from drama— until one encounters Fata Morgana. Arguments can be made to place Fata Morgana in either of the two regimes, but, in exhaustion, one is left looking for a third. Perhaps the film rests most comfortably in the category of experimental or avant-garde cinema. Herzog's affinities with the American underground cinema have been noted before, ^ but considering the film in such a regime, one notices that its length (79 minutes) is quite long when compared to the clear majority of notable experimental films. One has to look to such films as the inert marathons of Andy Warhol or Chris Marker's fictional Peter W. Jansen, "Innen/aussen/innen: Funktionen von Raum und Landschaft," Herzog/Kluge/Straub, eds. Peter W. Jansen and Wolfram Schiitte, Reihe Film, No. 9 (Munich: Hanser, 1976), p. 81. 112 travelogue Sans soliel (1982) for a comparable combination of feature length and experimental content. Shooting intermittently between 1968 and 1970, Herzog took his cameras to Kenya, Tanzania, Algeria, Nigeria, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Mali, the Ivory Coast, and the Canary Islands. Some of Fata Morgana was shot during the production of the documentary The Flying Doctors of East Africa (Die fliegenden Arzte von Ostafrika, 1970) and the feature Even Dwarfs Started Small. Little information, however, is available concerning how Herzog raised the 260,000 DM budget of such a seemingly unsalable project. Perhaps money was obtained on the basis of financing a science—fiction film. Originally, the project was to tell the story of visitors from another planet filming a report about Earth. Herzog articulated the motivation behind this approach in an interview eight years after the film was released : I have become increasingly obsessed with what I would name a primordial innocence of vision. How does it look for a spaceman to come onto this planet and see a tree or ryefield for the first time? What does it mean, what does he feel? How can we regain innocence in our way of visioij, our vision that has been so badly contaminated? Examining this statement, one sees that Herzog's idealization of vision does not distinguish between the 2 Herzog interviewed by O'Toole, "Close to the Center , " p . 48. 113 hypothetical spaceman's culturally determined way of seeing and one that supposedly predates cultural inscription. Perhaps unable to reconcile the two, the director changed his approach to the film: "I tossed away my script the very 3 first day of shooting and I let things come into me." According to the director, once the project was finished, he was reluctant to screen it for theatrical audiences: It is strange because I thought people wouldn't like the film and they would find it very peculiar and laugh at it so 1 wanted to keep it a secret all my life. I planned to hand it over to my best friend before I died and then he would hand it over to his best friend before he died and so on. However, the film was tricked out of my hands after two years of hiding it by Lotte Eisner and Henri Langlois. They just didn't hand me the print back, they gave it to the Quinzai^e des Realisateur in Cannes and so it was shown. This may be an exaggeration. Although almost a full year elapsed between the film's completion in June 1970 and its premiere at Cannes on 17 May 1971, one accepts only with great difficulty that Herzog, the great self-promoter, was willing to sacrifice a considerable amount of money and keep his film off the screen. More intriguing in this statement is the idea of the film as an heirloom rather than a commodity. Herzog has mentioned before how he 3 Herzog interviewed by Murray, "Werner Herzog: Interview," p. 318. 4 Ibid. 114 believes his films will "come into their own" in the future rather than now.^ Certainly, he thought that audiences for Fata Morgana had not yet been created, that a dramatically different sphere of reception was needed. But, since Herzog does not connect such an unprofitable audience to the film's creation within a capitalist system of exchange, the statement does not realistically construct an alternative context for the film's reception. To better understand the issues of perception and reception, we must now turn to the film itself. "Fata morgana" means mirage. The word comes from the Italian name for Morgan le Fay, the sorceress of Arthurian legend. Thus, the title of Herzog's film evokes not only perception, but also myth and magic— qualities often associated with the cinema. The film is divided into three parts: "The Creation" ("Die Schopfung"), "Paradise" ("Das Paradies"), and "The Golden Age" ("Das goldene Zeitalter"). However, the disjointed narrative creates no unity among the episodes; the divisions seem almost arbitrary. The most obvious stylistic difference between each episode is merely the use of a different voice-over narrator to read an apparently absurd text. Meanwhile: "The images of the three segments of Fata Morgana are virtually interchangeable, creating the illusion of simultaneity 5 Elsaesser, "Postwar," p. 13. 115 6 rather than narrative 'progress Desertscapes from North Africa are intercut with images of Saharan shanty towns. Arabs and black Africans gradually populate the frame, but their actions within the environment are not understood by the Western viewer. When the occasional European appears before the camera, he or she seems laughably out of place, hopelessly ordinary in this extraordinary environment. The puzzling parade of sights and sounds owes much to surrealism, and the title "The jyj. A Golden Age" certainly refers back to Bunuel's L"Age d^or ( 1930) . The film opens with an airplane landing on a runway. Shooting almost directly in front of the aircraft, and using a long-focus lens, the camera reduces the drama of movement to such an extent that the potentially powerful image is rendered uneventful. No sooner does the machine touch ground when the film cuts to a similar plane, shot from the same angle, taking its turn down the runway— only to disappear when the film cuts yet again to a third airplane. In all, eight airplanes land from the sky. The camera follows none of them. Instead, the film cuts to a desert landscape: a still image of sky and sandy horizon that seems to last as interminably long as the jump-cut Elizabeth Cleere, "Three Films by Werner Herzog: Seen in the Light of the Grotesque," Wide Angle, 3, No. 4 (October 1980), p. 16. 116 repetition of airplanes. The next shot, when it finally arrives, examines another desert horizon. Following the stillness of the preceding landscape, camera movement— a slow pan— comes as a welcome relief. The shot "climaxes" when a distant plateau creeps into the frame and bends the straight horizon. The airplane sequence opening the film establishes at once the discursive conflict between symbolic and imaginary: the plane (in the tradition of Signs of Life and looking forward to Aguirre) instills expectations of dominant narrative. But as soon as the exercise in repetition becomes clear, and as soon as the sequence is followed by images that visually oppose it, the viewer realizes that these expectations are thwarted. If receptive to the imaginary discourse, the spectator will appreciate small moments in the film— like the appearance of a distant plateau on the desert horizon— that are usually of no consequence in dominant cinema. With the third shot of the desert, the voice-over narration begins, and with it, the bewildering dichotomy between the images and the soundtrack. The frame displays another desertscape: sand, distant stone crags, and a horizon. Small rock-like objects lie scattered on the sand. Perhaps the viewer hungry for narrative progression will wonder what these objects are and whether their presence will grow into some kind of story. Then the ghostly voice of a woman haunts the soundtrack. Audiences of the American print hear the monotonous intonations of a male announcer plastering over her words: "And it is told how once the earth swayed in deep quiet, rested in deep stillness, softly rocking, and lay there, lonely and void." As more shots of the desert appear in turn, the aural palimpsest continues: And this is the first testimony, the first word. There was no man nor beast, no fowl, fish, crab, tree, stone, cave, gorge, grass tuft, or bush— only the heavens were there. Invisible was the face of the earth. Only the seas gathered under the firmament. That was all. Nothing was there to take form or become audible, nothing to move, trickle, or rush under the firmament. There was only the nothingness. The voice(s) will go on to narrate the creation of earth and man by pagan gods. (This aural story is the most obvious argument against those who describe Fata Morgana as "non-narrative.") The narrative disjunction between image and sound begins as the combination of two seemingly unrelated narratives, but then emerges as the collision of two antagonistic diegeses. The viewer's search for visual and aural unity is frustrated by an alternate Genesis told against an environment already created. For example, the viewer sees the image of an object racing back and forth on the desert horizon, distorted by the rippling vapors of a mirage, while the narrator says: "There was no man nor beast . . . only the heavens were there." 118 The narrator concludes her tale: the gods, displeased by the humans they created, annihilate the people of the earth to punish them for being "without understanding" and for not worshipping their creators as gods. The story prefigures Herzog's vision of Kaspar Hauser: humanity is destroyed for not conforming to the prevailing rules of meaning and understanding. Once again, a linear narrative is imposed on resistant images; one may listen to the story as yet another symbolic misinterpretation of something it cannot comprehend. But the most concrete synthesis of the symbolic/imaginary opposition is the acknowledgement of the images and the soundtrack as two distinct components of the apparatus . Rather than mystifying the narrative means through synchronous sound, thus creating the illusion of a unified diegesis, "The Creation" separates these two levels of discourse to heighten the narrative differences between the spoken and the seen— a step towards anatomizing the apparatus . After the airplane sequence of the film's opening, synchronized sound does not resume until the next segment, "Paradise." This new "chapter" begins with a shot of an old African man and a younger African woman walking from the darkness of a cave towards the camera. The man wears a frayed uniform decorated with medals; around her neck, the woman wears a radio that blasts rock and roll: a startling collision of West and non-West. Then the old man leans 119 forward and speaks directly to the camera in his African tongue. The words are not translated. The first speech in the film by an on-screen character, even in confirming image-sound unity, adds to the lack of comprehension by the average Western spectator. Later in this segment, Third World people will speak and be understood in the company of Europeans: an Arab boy will ask an amount of money ("one dinar") from a German man, and a group of African children will recite in German, "Blitzkrieg is madness," while they and their Aryan instructress stand in a pool of liquid. The young inhabitants, it seems, will regurgitate the monetary and ideological pabulum of the West devoured by their cultures. But this tells us more about the West than about the primordial puzzle of the environment represented by the old African from the cave. "Paradise" is as perplexing as "The Creation." A voice-over narrator begins a description of one "Flying Robert," suggesting a narrative akin to that of the first segment, but this is broken when the voice stops its description and starts reciting strange sentences: "In Paradise, one crosses the sand without seeing his shadow. There are landscapes without deeper meaning. Paradise is for everyone to have. In Paradise, only God is watching. . . . In Paradise, man is born dead. . . ." Meanwhile, the camera captures enigmatic images similar to or borrowed from "The Creation." The voice-over 120 is interrupted by a synchronous-sound shot: a German scientist holds a lizard very close to the lens of the camera as he rambles on about the specimen. His halting speech, his black goggles, and the distorting camera lens undercut his information about the environment. But perhaps the most disturbing images are the camera's frequent trackings around industrial construction sites in the desert. Over the travelling shots of pipe and barbed wire, the soundtrack plays Leonard Cohen's song, "Suzanne." One thinks about the scientist's dark goggles— and about one's own inability to see into these images— as the song is mumbled from the speaker: ". . . And you want to travel blind . . ." The scientist's dark goggles return in the third segment, "The Golden Age" (as they would return again in Even Dwarfs Started Small). Here, they are worn by a drummer as he pounds the rhythm to a song he inaudibly sings. Accompanying him on the piano is a woman wearing a beehive hairdo and a blank expression. They dutifully plough through the song in a cramped, meagerly decorated auditorium. "The Golden Age" returns to these musicians between shots of the desert, sub-Saharan Africa, and more ridiculous white people. Like the other segments, "The Golden Age" has a narrator, but unlike them, this voice-over makes comments 121 directly about the images. Over a tableau of the two musicians, his first words are: In the Golden Age, man and woman live in harmony. Now, for example, they appear before the lens of the camera, death in their eyes, a smile on their faces, a finger in the pie [die Hand im Spiel]. This is the soundtrack's first acknowledgement of concurrent images, of the apparatus, and of a relation between sound and picture. However, the voice's description of the frame is questionable: the drummer's eyes cannot be seen, and neither of them is smiling. No sooner is the sight-sound connection made than it is broken. The voice-over then continues in the tradition of the previous narrators, as the detached aural complement to incomprehensible images. For instance, a procession of African villagers, apparently in traditional garb, parades past the camera; a jump cut changes their direction. At this moment, the voice says, "In the Golden Age, people don't forget to pray, so God won't come to a bad end." This sentence will be heard again— with only minor variation— in Aguirre's final words to the dying Carvajal. In retrospect, one realizes that the voice-over narrator is, like Aguirre, affiliated with a symbolic discourse. The relationship between sight and sound is raised again in one of many intriguing shots. Screen right, a European man (Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg) stands up to 122 his waist in dry lava, a potted plant beside him. Screen left, another European (designated in the screenplay as "English tourist") / movie camera in hand, films a laughing Arab guitarist. In the center of the composition, another Arab holds a camel's bridle; man and beast stand in the background, away from the other three. The guitarist cannot stop laughing as the "Man in the Lava" reads from a piece of paper words reminiscent of the voice-over narration: And yet, from this mysterious soil, they wrestle harvest, the reaping of which gives part pain to the farmer and partly pleasure. It is difficult not to come across a dromedary at the wayside typically bridled. As a draught-working pack- and-saddle animal. Here, the English tourist looks up from his viewfinder to say, "Ah, yes, saddle-animal," and then resumes filming the laughing guitarist. The Man in the Lava continues: And here, scarcely have we turned our eyes to the right [when] the rapture is over for the visitor. The sight is terrifying. Silence is needed. Calmly we ask ourselves [where we are going]. And silence is almost the answer. We glide over the landscape. It seems as though this tragic Werner Herzog, Fata Morgana, in Dr ehbiicher (Munich: Skellig, 1977) I, 201. This "screenplay" is only a transcription of the words spoken in the film. Such a post-facto scenario does not deal helpfully with the film's complexities. g These quotes are drawn from the film's subtitles. jThe brackets represent words untranslated from the [soundtrack.__________________________________________________________________ 123 vision would be unending, full of strange beauty, otherwise hellish. Our eyes cannot stand this for very long, and an inner voice urges us to hurry on and look at the powerful growth of plants, which are wrestled from the soil. This moment reflexively foregrounds the narrative approach of Fata Morgana. The non-Western environment is consumed as spectacle by the West and its camera. The visual distance between filmmaker and speaker heightens the distance between image and narration maintained throughout the film. The words are vaguely descriptive but come to no conclusion or understanding; instead, they fall back upon themselves, creating a circular structure and calling for silence, the antithesis of the words themselves. All this is done to the amusement of the laughing Arab, who, in his mockery, insinuates an understanding of this environment different from the incomprehensive constructs of the more powerful Western discourse. "The Golden Age" then returns to the m ysterious images t y p i c a l of Fata Morgana. Sweeping h e l ic o p t e r shots of mountains, water, and sand transform some images into L o t i l e a b str a c t c o m p o sition s, two-dim ensional d e s ig n s . The v o ic e - o v e r , a l l along e x t o l l i n g the v ir t u e s of the Golden Age, speaks of peace. I t s l a s t sentence i s tr a n s la te d by the American narrator a s, "The land i s entranced with peace." (The German words, "Das Land i s t von Sinnen vor Frieden ," might be b e tte r rendered a s, "The land i s insane 12b because of peace.") The last image is a familiar one: an object, disfigured by a mirage, races back and forth along the horizon. Through its complete disregard for dominant convention, Fata Morgana seeks to show us images in a new way, a way that seems far removed from familiar cinematic representation. The viewer is correctly assumed to be a product of dominant discourse. The strangeness of the images is a result of both their unaccountability to a plot-oriented cinema and their unfamiliarity to the spectator. Had the average Western audience better knowledge of Africa, the images might be less mysterious. The power of the film depends most of all on a viewer ignorant of the Third World. This spectator positioning raises the issue of how what we know is imbricated with what we see. Overthrowing the codification of dominant cinematic perception, Herzog attacks the codification of— and thereby, the restriction of— human perception. Structuring his visuals within the largely uncodified regime of the feature-length avant-garde film, Herzog provides an almost unique register for image reception. Combining this approach with the anthropological concerns of the visual content (particularly the relationship of the Africans to the industrialization of their environment), the film creates a context wherein a new perceptual register is bound to the 125 survival of ancient ways of life and the survival of all . humanity. Pushing the frontiers of cinema, Herzog pushes the frontiers of human understanding— and with it, the chance for a more humane persistence of our species. But to what extent is our perception broadened? We are made aware of the limits of the symbolic discourse, limits that are startling because of their usually unnoticed narrowness and pervasiveness. The film positions us to be critical of our dominant assumptions, assumptions that follow us as we follow the film. We cannot shake free of them. Always looking for narrative progression, always seeking image-sound unity, always seeking some aesthetic "point" to be made— dominant patterns of film reception interfere with the possibility of cinematic stimuli as a gateway to a consciousness outside narrative. ("Calmly we ask ourselves where we are going. And silence is almost the answer.") At the same time, dominant narrative assumptions are indispensable to the film's conveyance of its issues: without assumptions or expectations, Herzog's intentions would be lost to the audience. Fata Morgana's inability to overcome dominant expectations springs from the camera's inability to overcome its own ideological inscriptions. When one becomes aware of the image-sound relationship in "The Creation" as a comparison between the creation of Earth and the creation of an industrial landscape (as when the 126 shanty-towns are seen only after the aural creation of the mountains), one is inclined to speculate how a literal adaptation of the aural myth would appear on film, how a "land of silence and darkness" would be portrayed by a medium restricted to sound and image as its only means of communication. (Herzog's own answer to this question also appeared in 1971: Land of Silence and Darkness [Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit], a documentary on the deaf and blind, once again took viewers to the audiovisual limits of the medium and concluded that there is no way for film to know such a diametrically opposed realm of experience . ) Even Brechtian participation by the viewer is questioned. In "The Creation," the camera slowly tracks around the clustered crests of sand dunes. The smooth curvature of the sand allows erotic inferences by the viewer (at least by the heterosexual male viewer, for whom the majority of dominant films are made): one may see, instead of sand, the recumbent body of a naked woman. Although the viewer is thrown into a high state of spectatorial activity to achieve this impression, the inference itself is one drawn from portrayals of women in dominant media. So, in frustrating representational screen imagery determined by dominant discourse, the film turns toward mental imagery also determined by dominant dis course . 127 The camera, however, acknowledges the artificiality of its image-making. A number of shots — such as the scientist with the lizard and the Arab boy holding his fox-like pet by the neck— in placing their subjects at the center of the lens, call attention to the camera's Cyclopean eye. If the lens distorts, the anamorphism of the image, progressing from its center, exacerbates this quality. Similarly, the tracking shots , those that keep the camera on a steady angle in relation to the track, accentuate the image's vanishing point— particularly in one shot towards the end of "The Creation" where the speed of the track slurs the image until the vanishing point is its most pronounced element. Fata Morgana's frequent use of tracking shots affirms that, despite the wealth of visual information, we are always brought back to their common denominator: these images are created by an apparatus that utilizes a vanishing point. The convention of perspective, which is unique to European art and which was first established in the early Renaissance, centres everything on the eye of the beholder. It is like a beam from a lighthouse— only instead of light travelling outwards, appearances travel in. The conventions called those appearances reality. Perspective makes the single eye the centre of the visible world. Everything converges on to the eye as to the vanishing point of infinity. The visible world is arranged for the spectator as the 128 universe was once thought to be arranged for God . John Berger's concise summary of Western perspective and its implicit ideology brings to the fore a consequence of the cinematic apparatus criticized by Fata Morgana: the positioning of the spectator in a God-like omniscient state. Contrary to the invisible enunciations of dominant cinema, Fata Morgana, through its self-reflexivity, reminds the viewer that the cinema is itself a product of industry. Thus, the viewer is only made aware of the desert people through an extension of the forces that are gradually destroying their environment. Imperial and industrial desolation of the habitat aligns itself to the destruction of humanity by the pagan gods of the creation myth. The comparison is made early in the film when a frame filled with burning methane gas is seen over the narrator saying: "This is the name of the god; this is how he is named." Although the people we later see are not destroyed like the people in the creation myth, their environment has been corrupted beyond repair. In the "Paradise" segment, the narrator says, "There the landscape is as God has commanded it to be," while our eyes tell us that the landscape is 9 John Berger et al., Ways of Seeing (New York: BBC/Penguin, 1972), p. 16. See also Jean-Louis Beaudry, "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus," trans. Alan Williams, Film Quarterly, 28, No. 2 (Winter 1974-75), p. 46. 129 determined by the forces of human industry. Furthermore, the evocation of the divine is present in the very titles "The Creation" and "Paradise." But the most obvious link between God and the viewer is made when the second narrator says: "In Paradise, only God is watching" ("In Paradies schaut nur Gott zu"). The combination of image and soundtrack implies that old destructive gods have been replaced by new destructive colonizers, and they have brought with them an image-maker that idealizes their perception into a condescending, apparently powerful position once reserved for ancient deities. Given the ideological overdetermination of the cinema as part of Western industrial Imperialism, we can only see the desert people as an industrialized people, as part of a forced culture incongruous to the primordial state of their environment. We cannot know these people through their pre-industrial identity. An imaginary state of existence cannot be captured by a symbolic apparatus. Fata Morgana^s central subject seems to be the Third World (the hierarchical and disagreeable term will have to suffice) and its appropriation by Western industrialism. However, by showing the incongruity between West and non- West in such an oblique and puzzling way, Herzog does not lead to a comprehensive analysis of economic imperialism and its effects upon the people and the environment. Thus, a concrete argument to undo the negative effects is not 130 offered. To those who see a viable cinematic portrayal of the Third World only in terms of a materialist deconstruction of imperialism and a call for militant action, Fata Morgana will remain a film of mystification, a perpetuator of imperialism and neo-colonial ideology. This view, of course, overlooks Herzog's critique of Western ideology. Because the cinematic apparatus is the means of Fata Morgana's creation, the film ultimately deconstructs the material— and thereby, the ideological— limits of the apparatus as one perpetuator of Western ethnocentrism. Fata Morgana's imaginary discourse politicizes not only the form, but also how we perceive the content. As we view the industrial rape of Africa through the industry of cinema, we must pause and question how an oppositional discourse may be conveyed through a medium that has so many Western ideological precepts built into it. After all, even in their excellent anti-imperial manifesto, "Towards a Third Cinema," Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino do not discuss how cinema can be isolated from its imperial context; instead, they claim that ideology may be overcome through the equation of revolutionary struggle with See, for example, Kolker, The Altering Eye, pp. 257-61 . 131 " T r u t h . Fata Morgana, instead, probes such uncritical use of this loaded word and its ability to naturalize the filmmaking process. The film's resistance to Western preconceptions of cinematic discourse allows the viewer to realize how narrative per se , through its imperial appropriation, has determined much of the way the Third World is perceived by both Western audiences and Third World audiences. Given the Western spectator's inability to perceive a Third World identity through an industrial apparatus, Herzog has chosen an appropriate text with which to begin the film. The creation myth is drawn from the Popol Vuh, the ancient "book of council" of the Quiche Mayan 12 s Indians. Perhaps the Quiche equivalent of the Bible, the Popol Vuh is a document shrouded by mystery. The earliest surviving copy is an eighteenth-century manuscript bearing two columns, one the Quiche script, the other its Spanish See Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino, "Towards a Third Cinema," Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1976), esp. pp. 45, 49 . 12 The Quiche are a people descended from the earlier Mayan civilization. By the time they were conquered by Spain in 1524, they had been long established in what is now southern Guatemala. The text was translated (presumably from the Spanish) for the film by Herzog and Manfred Eigendorf, who also collaborated to write "Paradise" and "The Golden Age." The Popol Vuh, by the way, also inspired the name of Florian Fricke's music group, a name that appears on the credits of many Herzog films. 132 translation; this is a copy made by a Spanish monk from a supposedly original Quiche manuscript. The supposed original (which remains lost to this day) is believed to date from the sixteenth century, but the Popol Vuh suggests an existence as old as the Quiche themselves: [W]e shall write now under the Law of God and Christianity; we shall bring it to light because now the Popol Vuh, as it is called, cannot be seen anymore, in which was clearly seen the coming from the other side of the sea and the narration of our obscurity, and our life was clearly seen. The original book, written long ago, existed, but its sight ^ hidden to the searcher and to the thinker. These words from the Popol Vuh's preamble not only beg the question of a pre-Columbian text (which "cannot be seen anymore"), but also self-reflexively foreground the imperceptibility and the dying of what the authors call a "clear" way of "seeing" by an invading ideology. The Quiche script, from which the Spanish translation was made, was also a product of the conquest: it consisted of Latin letters, which the Indians were taught, to replace the hieroglyphs found in older Quiche manuscripts. Thus, the reader's view of this ancient civilization is thoroughly refracted by the conquering ideology. All awareness of a pre-colonial culture is distorted on every 13 Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche Maya, trans . Delia Goetz, Sylvanus G. Morley, and Adrian iRecinos (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1950), pp. 79-80. 133 level of discourse. This mirrors exactly the premise of Herzog's film. Furthermore, the theory that the original Popol Vuh consisted exclusively of pre-Columbian hieroglyphs is based on the many passages that, in the words of one translator, suggest "a sudden still picture from a story already well under way rather than a moving picture unfolding in the course of the events of that 14 story." Included in this description are the first words spoken in Fata Morgana. The film consequently adapts the discrepancy between the conquering word and the image that reaches for an elusive primordialism, the inability of the former to account for the latter. As a result, the images of Fata Morgana seem themselves "well under way." The voice reading from the Popol Vuh belongs to Lotte Eisner, the critic and film historian whose writings have done much to extend awareness of the German Expressionist cinema of the 1920s. Eisner's voice builds a frail bridge between a cinema that once challenged the narrative power of Hollywood (only to later be absorbed by it) and the challenging cinema of Herzog and his colleagues. Fata Morgana's search for a "primordial" way of seeing associates the colonization of the Third World with the colonization— particularly the cinematic colonization— of 14 Dennis Tedlock, trans., Introd., Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life |and the Glories of Gods and Kings (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 31. 13^ Germany. But, the Germans themselves also act as colonizers, perpetuators of the invading ideology. The landing airplanes that opened the film, then, also refer back to Germany: they echo Hitler's descent from the sky that begins Triumph of the Will. The inability of the Germans in Fata Morgana to connect with the haunted environment extends from their inscription within the camera's symbolic discourse. But Eisner's voice, in its evocation of another lost cultural identity, implies that this has not always been the case. "In Paradise," to quote the American narrator, "even Gentiles move mountains." Describing Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (1983), Carolyn A. Durham concludes: In the confrontation between the West and the East, film cannot be representational; it can only deal with the impossibility of representation. Such films must finally be self- referential of necessity; they must refer the West back to itself to reveal the West to itself in its egocentric self-absorption. The message is clear if painful: we reflect only ourselves; we should reflect on ourselves; only then can we learn to see^eyond and behind our cultural as sumpt ions. Fata Morgana not only shares this view, but goes much farther than Weir's film in manifesting this crucial issue Although resistant to viewer complacency in its own ways, ^ Carolyn A. Durham, "The Year of Living Dangerously: Can Vision Be a Model for Knowledge?" Jump Cut, No. 30 (1985), p. 7. 135 Weir's film— and other examples could be included here— conforms so strongly to dominant codes that Durham's conclusion might not be acknowledged by a majority of its viewers. While a film like The Year of Living Dangerously should be praised for at least attempting to bring issues of perception to a popular level, Fata Morgana deserves special attention for forming its own narrative structure in terms that make the viewer's awareness of representation and perception inescapable. The Third World is not the film's central subject after all. Although Herzog's purest example of the imaginary discourse, Fata Morgana does not escape the symbolic: the plot-oriented soundtrack narrative of "The Creation" establishes a symbolic discourse to counter the unusual unfolding of images, and the film's viewer, as mentioned before, is expected to be one shaped by the symbolic discourse of dominant cinema. But, of course, the presence of the symbolic goes much deeper. Essentially all the imaginary discourse can do is take the viewer to the limits of dominant construction. One sees the ruptures and one may ascertain their significance, but the ruptures themselves do not constitute a transcendence of the interrupted discourse. Rather, the ruptures show the viewer that the symbolic discourse is itself imaginary, a construct of imagined unity and wholeness similar to 136 Lacan's theory of mirror-phase lisrecognition.^ The symbolic and imaginary discourses, therefore, depend on one another for their very being: one cannot exist without the other. One does not perceive outside culture. The educated eye may, at best, only perceive the ragged limits of its cultural placement. If a "primordial innocence of vision" exists (and this is very doubtful), it is inaccessible to the ideology of mechanized and industrialized photography. Applying this awareness to Every Man for Himself, one may say that the film does not portray Kaspar's mindscreens, but, instead, shows the inability of the motion-picture camera to depict something so alien to its ideology. Fata Morgana stretches this principle to the length of a feature film. Indeed, Kaspar's deathbed vision makes explicit and obvious references to Fata Morgana, particularly its desert setting and the mirage as an antagonistic element. In both films, one senses a comparison between the desert mirage and the insubstantiality of unquestioned cinematic illusion. The "primordial innocence of vision" runs aground of the constructed and culturally determined subjectivity This, of course, is the premise of Christian Metz's The Imaginary Signifier (Bloomington: Univ. of Indiana Press, 1982). Lacan's symbolic/imaginary structure is completed by his concept of the real, the referent of discursive activity. 137 necessary to make any vision possible. But, In connecting vision to the viewer's empirical experience— and thus, the viewer's knowledge— of the world, Herzog's search for new images always carries the potential to expand knowledge. Also, the director's belief that his work will find its best audience in the future, a kind of filmic fermentation, may be seen as part of a gradual, long-term hermeneutical shift: unconventional images as part of a process of new knowledge. While skeptical of the cinema's ability to induce immediate political change, Herzog admits: [I]n the long run, I djo think that films--my films included— could have some sort of political impact eventually because they might be able to change our basic understanding of things, and changes of this sort, of course, in the long range will have definite effects. Rupturing cultural bounds opens the potential for long-term radical possibilities, for an expanded consciousness that reaches beyond our present-day ideological limitations. Herzog is striving for a perceptual evolution, which, as part of human change, is also a profound political transformation. However, should such a change be realized, ideology, as Althusser attests, will never be completely cast away. Seeing beyond one's culture and ideology remains Herzog's grandest illusion. Werner Herzog interviewed by Roger Ebert, Images at the Horizon, ed. Gene Walsh (Chicago: Facets Multimedia, 1979), n. pag. [final page of interview]. 138 Conclus ion Contrary to his public image, Herzog's visionary powers are not ahistorical; they are rooted in a particular historical, political, and aesthetic context. Contrary to the more critically demanding position, Herzog is not, after close analysis, fatalistic and reactionary. In his films, the interrogation of the viewer's sense of perception leads to a greater awareness of one's own social construction in one's own historical present. This tendency is traceable, despite his contrary assertions,^ to Herzog's career as a filmmaker emerging from the political discontent and the artistic ferment of the '60s. Through the director's visionary cinema, the viewer has the chance to realize the negative aspects of his or her own social position. But the question must ultimately be asked, what can be done to change them? Here Herzog is disturbingly reticent, but no more so than his compatriots. The much praised works of Fassbinder and Wenders, praised sometimes at Herzog's expense, often raise the same issues of historical awareness through comparable criticism of filmic conventions— only to have their pivotal characters physically or spiritually perish rather than ^ Pflaum, "Interview," p. 65. Herzog sees the '60s as more of a "cultural" influence than a political one. 139 profoundly change. But, because Fassbinder and Wenders locate their despair in overt relation to specific political issues or couch their narratives in overtly psychoanalytic terms, their pessimism becomes more palatable to various important theoreticians and critics. This is not said to disparage the films of Fassbinder and Wenders, but to remind the reader that pessimism and cynicism must be dealt with in all hypotheses of political transformation. And given the status of the West German cinema of the 1980s, pessimism and cynicism are not out of place . "The so-called New German Cinema is now a thing of the past. It has come to an end just like film noir or Picasso's Blue Period." So spoke the business manager of the Filmverlag der Autoren, Hansjorg Kopp, quoted in an 2 article published in 1985 . To the American cineaste, this is a shocking statement to come from the Filmverlag, the film distribution company founded in 1971 by progressive West German filmmakers— among them, Fassbinder and Wenders — and the one most responsible for making the new cinema available. However, since its rescue from bankruptcy in 1977 by Rudolf Augstein, owner of Der Spiegel magazine, the Filmverlag has become increasingly international in its tastes. It currently prizes its Hollywood acquisitions 2 William Fisher, "Germany: A Neverending Story," Sight and Sound, 54, No. 3 (Summer 1985), p. 178. 140 3 over its cultivation of progressive domestic filmmaking. The Filmverlag's loss of faith in New German Cinema signals the movement's domestic deterioration. Throughout the '70s and into the early '80s, New German Cinema has been marked by a number of contradictions. Despite America's embracing what seemed to be a uniquely German film movement, the most widely publicized West German filmmakers— the Big Three plus Schlondorff — gradually moved toward international markets and English-language productions, as though they were gearing their films for their American audiences over any other spectator considerations. While this posture raised the issue of German identity under American ideology, popular criticism barely touched upon the implications of such an issue. For the other directors, the new diminution of federal monies and the government's disillusionment with the profitability of film loans necessitated packaging the fervor of Oberhausen into the "uncontroversial and easily legitimated" genre of the filmed literary masterpiece— what Rentschler relays as the "literature adaptation crisis." Furthermore, the Berufsverbot (censorship) that accompanied the anti-terrorist hysteria of the late '70s narrowed the availability of politically 3 Ibid. For more about the Filmverlag, see Dawson, "Labyrinth," p. 20. 4 Rentschler, West German Film, pp. 129-53. 141 pertinent creative works even further. This was especially true in 1977 after the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Daimler-Benz chairman and former SS officer Hanns-Martin Schleyer by the Red Army Faction, which was followed by the "suicides" of three RAF leaders— Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe— in a high-security prison. But contemporary to this reactionary shift, the compilation film Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst, 1978)— which counted contributions by Kluge, Fassbinder, and Schlondorff— was privately financed and released, a film reacting precisely and powerfully against the oppressive aftermath of the Schleyer murder. Meanwhile, recalcitrant voices still gained some access to film production, but little access to international audiences. The most remarkable among these directors were the women filmmakers— including von Trotta, Sander, and Sanders- Brahms--whose works nurtured feminist political analyses as part of an inspired cinema practice. Herzog's own career has manifested similar contradictions. While never relinquishing his exploration of human perception, he has, at least in his features, increasingly cushioned his blows against the symbolic discourse with his ambition to extend his international audience. Herzog must have concluded that the inaccessibility of Fata Morgana was an impasse. Whatever the reason, beginning with Aguirre and continuing through 142 to his latest feature, Where the Green Ants Dream, the director has made greater and greater concessions to established filmic traditions.^ Although Herzog still uses dominant cinema as a target for his imaginary discourse, his concessions at times mute the impact of his criticism. This reached unprecedented proportions in Fitzcarraldo , where the symbolically corrupted quest of the title character is opposed by a fictional Indian civilization, the portrayal of which does not rise above that of African peoples in Tarzan movies. Conceived as a spectacular and extravagant breakthrough to a Hollywood- level audience, Fitzcarraldo is marred by a paucity of thought-provoking imagery, despite the lavish spectacle. This disappointing film (his most expensive) was followed by another, Where the Green Ants Dream, wherein he constructed a Manichaean conflict between good Australian aborigines and bad Civilization. The white protagonist, torn between his compassion to the former and his indebtedness to the latter, resolves his dilemma by walking out of the symbolic narrative. Where the Green Ants Dream does not enrich the appropriation of dominant cinema that Herzog so brilliantly displayed Aguirre and Every Man for Himself. For an example of how such contradictions work in Nosferatu, see my discussion in "New German Cinema/Old Hollywood Genres," The USC Spectator, 5, No. 1 (Fall 1985), pp . 9-10. 143 In 1984, Herzog released his most overtly political film, the short documentary Ballad of the Little Soldier (Ballade von kleinen Soldaten). Herzog and his crew ventured into the jungles of Central America to document the Miskito Indians' armed struggle against Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Co-directed with Denis Reichle, the film emerges as a compelling deconstruction of the combat 6 documentary. Herzog claims to ally himself with the jMiskitos and not with the contras, the US-backed ant i- Sandinista army that has absorbed the Indians' conflict into its own. However, Herzog and Reichle give us no insight into the "primitive form of socialism" that they claim the Miskitos practice, the fading of which, along with the fading of the rest of the Miskito culture, the Ifilm laments. The lack of deeper economic and political insight creates an ambivalence that makes Ballad of the Little Soldier, like the Miskitos, vulnerable to co-option by the contra cause. Herzog followed this film with The Dark Glow of the Mountain (Gasherbrum, der leuchtende Berg, 1984), which, Riefenstahl-like, documents an expedition by Austrian mountain climber Reinhold Messner, but only glances over the Pakistani people he exploits to make his inutile quest a reality. Here Herzog's fascination for the ^ George Paul Csicsery, "Ballad of the Little Soldier: Werner Herzog in a Political Hall of Mirrors," Film Quarterly, 39, No. 2 (Winter 1985-86), pp. 10-13. 1* j 4 Romantic visionary is not matched by criticism of the discourse. Herzog's present slump would be less disheartening if the New German Cinema still maintained its radical drive. But the languishing of the movement and the languishing of an important practitioner are not coincidental. The West German cinema of the mid-1980s shares more with the cinema that Oberhausen protested than with the kind it started. Finding American backing and easting American leads in English-speaking roles, Petersen's The NeverEnding Story (1984) patterned itself so closely after Hollywood movies that the German author of the adapted book disowned the film. Downplaying its German identity did not stop Petersen's film from gathering approximately $2.7 million from government sources, a figure unobtainable to other West German filmmakers. "This was money from those public sources that was intended to aid the development of small projects by independent film-makers."7 Also, Doris Dorrie's French-style farce, Men (Manner, 1985), broke some box-office records, but not new ground for the German identity. Furthermore, a new spate of West German films will thoroughly embrace both America's film genres and its language. A majority of these projects will also seek 7 Fisher, "Germany," p. 177. IkS funds from the cultural institutions instigated by the spirit of Oberhausen. With every project that is written and directed in English, with every story treatment that is modified to appeal to an international audience, with every concession that studios and distributors make to an American market, a little more of Germany recedes. It's unfair, however, to call the new German film plan a sell-out for short-term profit. In their [the producers' and distributors'] view, they are simply following the path of least resistance to solvency. And it is a path not without its rewards. Meanwhile, Kluge and Straub and Huillet continue their occasional contributions to West German cinema, but their offerings have not gained much international exposure outside the festival circuit. All of Wenders' features since The American Friend have been shot mostly, if not entirely, in English and in the United States. His films remain compelling, but the question of where his criticism of America ends and where his absorption by it begins becomes increasingly harder to answer. Schlondorff's latest work has been undertaken in France and in America. And Fassbinder's death in 1982 robbed the New German Cinema of its most acclaimed and prolific practitioner. This conservatism in recent West German film production corresponds to the more conservative political climate, particularly with the Christian Democratic Party's re 8 Ibid. 146 evaluation of government funding for the few films that 9 still challenge the ideology of the state. The current entropy is attributable to this, but not exclusively. The antagonism of the established film industry and the ambivalence of domestic audiences have contributed in interlocking ways. Other factors may be discovered over the course of time that might give a better perspective on this state of affairs, but they will all be traceable to one integral element: the determination of West German identity by American ideology. Had the New German Cinema succeeded domestically as a popularly supported movement, it certainly would have necessitated greater political re- evaluation of the German identity as a product of American and Soviet occupation. Such raising of consciousness is opposed by the occupational ideology. The stagnation of New German Cinema, then, indicates the synthetic closure of an ideological rupture.^ Still, Herzog, despite Ballad of the Little Soldier, has yet to consciously acknowledge the politics of his own filmmaking and to accept the intellectualism necessary to bring his visionary ideals to fruition. One may even view ^ ,Ib_id_. , p . 174. ^ This is not to say that the scrutiny of West German society and ideology is no longer existent. The emergence of the Green Party as a vital force in domestic politics marks only one example of a continuing search for an identity beyond NATO. 14? The Dark Glow of the Mountain as refuting his heretofore implicit social analysis. However, this cannot be said with certainty, because much remains to be discussed concerning Herzog's work: its relation to German Romanticism, its debt to German Expressionism and other film movements,^ the interrelationship of his documentary and dramatic film practices, und so weiter. Based on the body of his work, Herzog deserves to be placed without hesitation in the company of Godard, Bunuel, Fassbinder, Straub and Huillet, Marker, Yvonne Rainer, Nagisa Oshima, Sergei Paradzhanov, Bernardo Bertolucci, and the legion of other filmmakers who have proven that intellectualism adds more to the film-viewing process than it takes away. One senses that Herzog's exclusion from such a list is based on his refusal to co-operate with intellectual critical analysis. But one may be confident that Herzog's films will eventually meet wholehearted critical acceptance. This may require the death of his mystical persona. This may also require allowing the films time to "come into their own," time for the work, the audience, and the filmmaker himself to fully ferment. Until then, we can turn to Herzog's canon to remind ourselves that transformation begins with perception. And through an altered perception, we can begin to see * * Begun by Horak, "Ecran Absurde," pp. 223-33 . 148“ mutability where we previously saw none. change the unchanging 1^9 Bibliography Sources on Herzog and/or New German Cinema Bachmann, Gideon. "The Man on the Volcano: A Portrait of Werner Herzog." Film Quarterly, 31, No. 1 (Fall 1977), pp. 2-10. Benelli, Dana. "The Cosmos and Its Discontents." Movietone News, No. 5 6 (4 November 1977), pp. 8-16. Blank, Les , and James Bogan, eds. Burden of Dreams. Berkeley: North Atlantic, 1984. Carroll, Noel. "Herzog, Presence, and Paradox." Persistence of Vision, No. 2 (Fall 1985), pp. 30-40. Clarke, Gerald. "Seeking Planets That Do Not Exist." Time, 20 March 1978, pp. 51-53. Cleere, Elizabeth. "Three Films by Werner Herzog: Seen in the Light of the Grotesque." Wide Angle, 7, No. 3 (October 1980), pp. 12-19. Corrigan, Timothy. New German Film: The Displaced Image. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1983. Csicsery, George Paul. "Ballad of the Little Soldier: Werner Herzog in a Political Hall of Mirrors." Film Quarterly, 39, No. 3 (Winter 1985-86), pp. 7-15. Davis, Howard, and Dilwyn Jenkins. "Fitzcarraldo: Exotic and Perverse." Jump Cut, No. 30 (1985), pp. 8-10. Dawson, Jan. "In Memoriam: Jan Dawson." BFI Monthly Film Bulletin, 47, No. 561 (October 1980), p. 204. -------------. "A Labyrinth of Subsidies: The Origins of the New German Cinema." Sight and Sound, 50, No. 1 (Winter 1980-81), pp. 14-20. Elsaesser, Thomas. "Lili Marleen: Fascism and the Film Industry." October, No. 21 (Summer 1982), pp. 115-40. -------------. "The Postwar German Cinema." In Fassbinder. Ed. Tony Rayns. 2nd ed. London: British Film Institute, 1979, pp. 1-16. 150 -------------. "Primary Indentification and the Historical Subject: Fassbinder and Germany." Cine-Tracts, No. 11 (Fall 1980), pp. 43-52. Finger, Ellis. "Kaspar Hauser Doubly Portrayed." Literature/Film Quarterly, 7, No. 3 (July 1979), pp. 235-43 . Fisher, William. "Germany: A Neverending Story." Sight and Sound, 54, No. 3 (Summer 1985), pp. 174-79. Franklin, James. New German Cinema: From Oberhausen to Hamburg♦ Boston: Twayne, 1983. Greenberg, Alan. Heart of Glass. Munich: Skellig, 1976. -. "Notes on Some European Directors." American F ilm, 3, No. 1 (October 1977 ), pp. 49-53 . Hansen, Miriam. "Cooperative Auteur Cinema and Oppositional Public Sphere: Alexander Kluge's Contribution to Germany in Autumn." New German Critique , Nos. 24/25 (Fall-Winter 1981-82), pp. 36-56 . Herzog, Werner. Drehbucher. 2 vols. Munich: Skellig, 1977. Screenplays. Trans. Alan Greenburg and Martje Herzog. New York: Tanam, 1980. -* Of Walking in Ice. Trans. Martje Herzog and Alan Greenberg. New York: Tanam, 1980. Horak, Jan-Christopher. "Werner Herzog's Ecran Absurde." Literature/Film Quarterly, 7, No. 3 (July 1979), pp. 223-34 . Jansen, Peter W., and Wolfram Schiitte, eds. Herzog/Kluge/Straub. Reihe Film, No. 9. Munich: Hanser , 19 7 6 . -------------- eds. Werner Herzog. Reihe Film, No. 22. Munich: Hanser, 1979. Kolker, Robert Phillip. The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983 . Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. The German Cinema. London: Dent, 1971. Moeller, Hans-Bernhard. "New German Cinema and Its Precarious Subsidy and Finance System." Trans. Roland 151 Reinhard. Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 5, No. 2 (Spring 1980), pp. 157-68. Murray, Scott. "Werner Herzog: Interview." Cinema Papers [1, No. 4] (December 1974), pp. 314-20. O'Toole, Lawrence. "The Great Ecstasy of the Filmmaker Herzog." Film Comment, 15, No. 6 (November-December 1979), pp.33-39. -------------. "I Feel That I'm Close to the Center of Things." Film Comment, 15, No. 6 (November-December 1979), pp. 40-44, 46-48. Overbey, David L. "Every Man for Himself." Sight and Sound, 44, No. 2 (Spring 1975), pp. 73-75. Payne, Robert. "New German Cinema/Old Hollywood Genres." The USC Spectator, 5, No. 1 (Fall 1985), pp. 8-11. Pflaum, Hans Gunther, and Hans Helmut Prinzler. Film in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1979 . Rentschler, Eric. "How American Is It: The U. S. as Image and Imaginary in German Film." Persistence of Vision, No. 2 (Fall 1985), pp. 5-18. -------------* West German Film in the Course of Time. Bedford Hills, N. Y.: Redgrave, 1984. Sandford, John. The New German Cinema. London: Oswald Wolf, 1980. Walsh, Gene, ed. Images at the Horizon. Chicago: Facets Multimedia, 1979. Sources of Theory Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971 . Beaudry, Jean-Louis. "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus." Trans. Alan Williams. Film Quarterly, 28, No. 2 (Winter 1974-75), pp. 39-47. Berger, John, et al. Ways of Seeing. New York: BBC/Penguin, 1972. 152 Brecht, Bertolt. "Notes to The Threepenny Opera." In his The Threepenny Opera. Trans, and ed. Ralph Manheim and John Willett. London: Eyre Methuen, 1979, pp. 90- 98 . --------------. "The Street Scene: A Basic Model for an Epic Theatre." In Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and trans. John Willett. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964, pp. 121-29. Burch, Noel. To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema. Rev. and ed. Annette Michelson. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1979. Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978. Durham, Carolyn B. "The Year of Living Dangerously: Can Vision Be a Model for Knowledge?" Jump Cut, No. 30 (1985), pp. 6-8. Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. Lorrain, Jorge. The Concept of Ideology. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1979. Nichols, Bill. Ideology and the Image. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1981. Polan, Dana B. "Formalism and Its Discontents." Jump Cut, No. 26 (December 1981), pp. 63—66. Solanas , Fernando, and Octavio Gettino. "Towards a Third Cinema." Movies and Methods. Ed. Bill Nichols. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1976, pp. 44-64. 153 Appendix; Filmography The following list of films directed by Herzog provides an overview of his career. I only include detailed information concerning the films I discuss at length in the preceding pages. Most of the facts listed below are drawn from Hans Helmut Prinzler, "Daten," in Werner Herzog, eds. Peter W. Jansen and WolframlSchutte, Reihe Film, No. 22 (Munich: Hanser, 1979)* PP* 1H6-53* The years that antecede the titles are the years of release, unless otherwise noted. 1962 (revised 1965)' Hercules (Herakles). 12 min. 196H (unreleased): Game in the Sand (Spiel im Sand), 1H min. 1967s The Unprecedented Defence of Fort Deutschkreutz (Die beispiellose Verteidigung der Festung Deutschkreutz), l4 min. 1968: Last Words (Letzte Worte). 13 min. 1968: Signs of Life (Lebenszeichen). Screenplay: Werner Herzog. Camera: Thomas Mauch. Camera Assistant: Dietrich Lohmann. Editors: Beate Mainka, Maximiliane Mainka. Sound: Herbert Prasch. Music: Stavros Xarchakos. Collaborators: Florian Fricke, Thomas Hartwig, Bettina von Waldthausen, Tasos Karabelas. Cast: Peter Brogle (Stroszek), Wolfgang Reichmann (Meinhard), Athina ZacharopoUlou (Nora), Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg (Becker), Wolfgang Stumpf (Captain), Henry van Lyck (Lieutenant), Julio Pinheiro (Gypsy), Florian Fricke (Pianist), Dr. Heinz Usener (Doctor), Werner Herzog (Soldier), Achmed Hafiz (Townsman). Produced by Werner Herzog Filmproduktioh. Associate Producer: Nicos Triandafyllidis. Shooting Time: June, July, September 19&7* Locations: Cos and Crete, Greece. Cost: ^00,000 DM. Running Time: 90 min. Premiere: 25 June 19&8, Berlin Film Festival. Certificate: Besonders wertvoll. 1969: Precautions Against Fanatics (Mafinahmen gegen Fanatiker), 11 min. " 1970:, The Flying Doctors^of East Africa (Die fliegenden Arzte von OstafrikaTi H5 min. 15^ 1970: Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen), 9^ min. 1970: Retarded Future (Behinderte Zukunft), 63 min. 1971: Fata Morgana. Screenplay: Werner Herzog (and Manfred Eigendorf). Camera: Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein. Editor: Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus. Sound: Werner Herzog. Music; Handel, Mozart, Blind Faith, Francois Couperin, Leonard Cohen. Cast: Wolfgang von Ungern- Sternberg, James William Gledhill, Eugen des Montagnes. Narrators; Lotte H. Eisner, Wolfgang Bachler, Manfred Eigendorf. Produced by Werner Herzog Filmproduktion. Shooting Times and Locations: Nov. 1968: Kenya and Tanzania; May-Sept. 1969: Algeria, Nigeria, Upper Volta, Mali, Ivory Coast; Dec. 1969: Lanzarote (Canary Islands). Shooting Completed: June 1970. Cost: 260,000 DM. 79 min. Premiere: 17 May 19711 Cannes (Quinzaine des Realisateurs). Certificate: Besonders wertvoll. 1971: Land of Silence and Darkness (Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit), 85 min. 1972: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes). Screenplay: Werner Herzog. Camera: Thomas Mauch. Second Cameras: Francisco Joan, Orlando Macchiavello. Editor: Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus. Sound: Herbert Prasch. Dubbing: Bob Oliver. Music: Popol Vuh. Assistant Director: Gustavo Cerff Arbulu. Cast: Klaus Kinski (Don Lope de Aguirre), Helena Rojo (Inez^de Atienza), Del Negro (Carvajal), Ruy Guerra (Ursua), Peter Berling (Guzman), Cecilia Rivera (Flores), Daniel Ades (Perucho), Edward Roland (Okello), ArmAnGoPP.0 lanah/Lt Armando) > ' Daniel Far fan-, Ale jandro Chavez, Antonio Marquez, Julio Martinez, Alejandro Repulles, and the Indians of the Lauramarca Co- Operative. Produced by Werner Herzog Filmproduktion and Hessischer Rundfunk. Associate Producer: Walter Saxer. Shooting Time: Jan.-Feb. 1972* Locations: Urubambatal, Huallaga River, Nanay River (Peru). Running Time: 93 min. Premiere: 29 December 1972, Cologne *(Original English Version). Certificate: Wertvoll. USA Videocassette: Continental Video 1056. 197^+i Every Man for Himself and God Against All (Jeder fur sich und Gott gegenalle) (US title: The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser; UK title: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser). Screenplay: Werner Herzog. Camera: Jorg Schmidt- Reitwein. Camera Assistant: Michael Gast. Second 155 Camera: Klaus Wyborny. Editor: Beate Mainka- Jellinhaus. Sound: Haymo Henry Heyder. Music: Pachelbel, Orlando di Lasso, Albinoni, Mozart. Art Direction: Henning von Gierke. Costumes: Gisela Storch, Ann Poppel. Assistant Director: Benedict Kuby. Cast: Bruno S. (Kaspar Hauser), Walter Ladengast (Daumer), Brigitte Mira (Kathe), Hans Musaus (Unknown Man), Willy Semmelrogge (Ringmaster), Michael Kroecher (Lord Stanhope), Henry van Lyck (Rittmeister), Enno Patalas (Pastor Fuhrmann), Elis Pilgrim (Second Pastor), Yolker Prechtel (Hiltel), Gloria Doer (Frau Hiltel), Helmut Doring (The Little King), Kidlat Tahimik (Hombrecito), Andi Gottwald (Young Mozart), Herbert Achternbusch (First Yokel), Wolfgang Bauer (Second Yokel), Walter Steiner (Third Yokel), Florian Fricke (Florian), Clemens Scheitz (Town Clerk), Johannes Buzalski (Policeman), Dr. Willy Meyer-Furst (Doctor), Alfred Edel (Logician), Franz Brumbach, Herbert Fritsch, Wilhelm Bayer, Peter Gebhart, Otto Heinzle, Reinhard Hauff. Produced by Werner Herzog Filmproduktion and Zweiter deutsche Fernsehen. Associate Producer: Walter Saxer. Shooting Time: May-July, Sept. 197^. Locations: Dinkelsbuhl (West Germany), Ireland, Spanish Sahara. Cost: 850,000 DM. Running Time: 109 min. Premiere: 1 November 197^, Dinkelsbuhl. Certificate: Besonders wertvoll. USA Videocassette: RCA/Columbia Home Video VCF3035. 197^: The Great Ecstasy of the.Sculptor Steiner (Die grofie Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner), ^5 min. 1976: Nobody Wants to Play with Me (Mit mir will keiner spielenj, min. 1976: How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck, ^ min. 1976: Heart of Glass (Herz aus Glas), 9^ min. 1977s La Soufriere, 31 min. 1977: Stroszek. 108 min. 1979: Nosferatu--The Vampyre (Nosferatu--Phantom der Nacht), 107 min. 1979: Woyzeck, i107 min. 1980: Huie's Sermon (Huies Predigt), 40 min. 1980: God' s Angry Man (Glaube und Wahrung), ^J-O min. 156 1982s Fitzcarraldo, 157 min. 1984: Where the Green Ants Dream, 100 min. 1984s Ballad of the Little Soldier (Ballade von kleinen So Ida ten) (Co-directed with Denis Reichle), 45 min. 1984s The Dark Glow of the Mountain (Gasherbrum, der leuchtende Berg). 45 min.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Payne, Robert Mercer (author)

Core Title Politics and the primal eye: Four films by Werner Herzog

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Cinema Television

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cinema,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Advisor Kinder, Marsha (committee chair), Houston, Beverle (committee member), Renov, Michael (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c20-42160

Unique identifier UC11260981

Identifier EP42945.pdf (filename),usctheses-c20-42160 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier EP42945.pdf

Dmrecord 42160

Document Type Thesis

Rights Payne, Robert Mercer

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA