Herzog was born "Werner Stipetićin" in Munich, Germany on 5 September 1942.
His mother Elisabeth Stipetić was Austrian of Croatian descent his father Dietrich Herzog was German and abandoned Elisabeth his son Till and baby Werner.
When Werner was two weeks old, his mother with her boys fled to a remote Bavarian village in the Alps after their home was narrowly missed by a bomb dropped on Munich as part of an Allied bombing raid in World War II.
He grew up in this rural setting in adverse poverty without running water, a flushing toilet, or a telephone.
He recounted that his family had "no toys" and "no tools" in the 2022 documentary about his life and career "Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer" he tells a harrowing story of himself and his brother starving eating these meager rations of food and his mother weeping telling them she loved them and she wished she could cut flesh from her bones to feed them. Really emotional stuff. I feel there was still some fun and adventure in young Werner's life even with an empty tummy, He said there was a sense of anarchy in the village where he grew up as all the fathers were absent.
Growing up in the Alps he never saw a film! In fact he did not even know that cinema even existed until a traveling projectionist came to his village and exhibited some films in the small schoolhouse building.
Sachrang the Bavarian Village where Herzog lived as a small child .
In the mid 1950s when Werner was 12 his mother relocated with her boys back to Munich. Immediate post WW2 Munich was no paradise and the continuity of Werner living in poverty with limited access to amenities continued. Werner has said he didn't use a telephone until he was 17 years old.
In his teenage years he went through a phase where he converted to Catholicism (this didn't last) and he started embarking on long journeys on foot. It was at this time he just knew he would become a filmmaker. I don't know if God told him but he just knew!
Young Werner Stipetić decided to change his name by adopting his estranged fathers surname Herzog. The young Werner liked "Herzog" because it is German for "Duke" and he felt it sounded powerful and impressive a good name for a filmmaker.
Werner Herzog says he learned the basics of filmmaking from a few pages in an encyclopedia. He said these pages provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a filmmaker. He also needed a camera. That issue was remedied when he stole a 35 mm camera from the Munich Film School. In later life Herzog has said about this acquisition "I don't consider it theft. It was just a necessity. I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with".
At the age of 19 Herzog made his first film a 9 minute short called "Herakles" (Heracles)
The film relates to six of the twelve labours of Heracles from Greek mythology. The film starts with shots of young male bodybuilders working out in a gym, posing on a stage and flexing their muscles.
Each of the labours are then announced by on-screen text in the form of a question, followed by related scenes of modern challenges intercut with the bodybuilders. The audio track of the film is saxophone jazz and sounds from a gym.
In 2001 Herzog was asked about his first film and he said ,
"Looking back on Herakles today, I find the film rather stupid and pointless, though at the time it was an important test for me. It taught me about editing together very diverse material that would not normally sit comfortably as a whole. For the film I took stock footage of an accident at Le Mans where something like eighty people died after fragments of a car flew into the spectators' stand, and inter-cut it with footage of bodybuilders, including Mr. Germany 1962. For me it was fascinating to edit material together that had such separate and individual lives. The film was some kind of an apprenticeship for me. I just felt it would be better to make a film than go to film school."
No matter how "stupid and pointless" that first film may have been it definitely lit a fire under the young filmmaker.
Herzog struggled to secure any funding for his film projects while he was in his last couple of years of high school. Werner worked night shifts as a welder in a steel factory while he was still at school to fund his dream of being a filmmaker.
When he finished high school he followed his girlfriend to Manchester, England, where he stayed for several months and learned to speak English.
He became intrigued by the post-independence Congo, but when he attempted to travel there he only managed to reach the south of Sudan before falling seriously ill.
While already making films, he had a brief stint at the University of Munich, where he studied history and literature. Herzog subsequently moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in order to study at Duquesne University.
As a Filmmaker Herzog along with Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff, pioneered the "New German Cinema" movement, which included narrative filmmakers and documentarians who filmed low budget productions influenced by the French New Wave.
In the early days of making his films Herzog developed the habit of using local regular people in scenes alongside professional cast actors. Not only saving money but this gives his work a tangible realness something that would go on to set his narrative work apart but the skills he gleaned aprotching locals would pay dividends when he would turn his hand to documentary filmmaking.
In addition to the short film "Herakles" (1962) he made "Game in the Sand" (1964) a 14 min short film, the plot concerns four children and a rooster in a cardboard box.
"The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz" (1966) a 15 min film that tells the story of four men who break into an abandoned castle that was involved in a battle between Russian and German forces during WW2, The men find old military uniforms and equipment they dress up and make believe defending the castle. & "Last Words" (1968) a 13 min film shot in two days in Greece the plot concerns the last man to leave the abandoned island of Spinalonga, which had been used as a leper colony.
A still from The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz & Last Words
Herzog made his first feature film in 1968 "Signs of Life"
The film was written, directed, and produced by Werner Herzog. Made on a tiny budget this film was not only a critical but also a commercial success.
The story is roughly based on the short story "Der Tolle Invalide auf dem Fort Ratonneau" by Achim von Arnim.
During World War II, three German soldiers are withdrawn from combat when one of them, Stroszek, is wounded. They are assigned to a small coastal community on the Greek island of Kos while Stroszek recuperates. The men become increasingly stir crazy in their uneventful new assignment. Stroszek eventually goes mad.
"Signs of Life" premiered at the 18th Berlin International Film Festival in 1968, where it won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize. The film also won the imaginatively titled "German Film Award" aka "A Lola" It is the German equivalent to an Oscar or BAFTA.
The success of "Signs of Life" along with the cash prize that came along with "The Lola" win supercharged Herzog's output. Pretty much having three projects in production simultaneously. The very offbeat feature film "Even Dwarfs Started Small" (1970) and two documentaries "The Flying Doctors of East Africa" (1969) & "Fata Morgana" (1971). He was no slouch.
He also launched into making a short film called "Precautions Against Fanatics" (1969) and two documentaries about disabled children "Handicapped Future" (1971) & "Land of Silence and Darkness" (1971)
Screenshot from "Fata Morgana"
Screenshot from "The Flying Doctors of East Africa"
At the same time as making all these projects Herzog started pre-production on a film that is truly remarkable.
A film that not only kicked off probably the most turbulent relationship ever known between a director and his leading man but has gone down as a solid gold classic that now regularly features in greatest films of all time lists.
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972)
Directed by Werner Herzog, Written by Werner Herzog, Produced by Werner Herzog & Walter Saxer, Music by Popol Vuh, Cinematography By Thomas Mauch, Edited by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus, Starring Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Ruy Guerra, Peter Berling, Cecilia Rivera, Dany Ades & Armando Polanah.
Don Lope de Aguirre, a ruthless Spanish conquistador, vies for power while part of an expedition in Peru to find El Dorado, the mythical seven cities of gold. Accompanied by his daughter, Flores, Aguirre faces off against his superior, Don Pedro de Ursua, and grows increasingly volatile after seizing control of the group. As Aguirre presses deeper into the Amazonian jungle, he descends further into madness.
This film is a masterpiece. I remember the first time I saw this there were moments when I thought stuff like "How did they film this?" it is like Herzog and a couple of crew members hopped in a time machine and tagged along with conquistadors in South America. The film oozes humidity, struggle and a terrifying sense of being in the absolute middle of nowhere and always being one mistake away from death.
Herzog was inspired to make the film after he borrowed a book on historical adventurers from a friend. After he read the half-page devoted to Lope de Aguirre, Werner immediately devised the story. The majority of the plot and characters are all fabricated but he did use some historical figures in purely fictitious ways.
Herzog wrote the whole screenplay in two-and-a-half days.
Much of the script was written during a 200 mile coach trip with a football team Herzog played on.
His team won that away game so the bus on the return journey was very rowdy with his teammates drinking and carousing, one of the team vomited on several pages of Herzog's manuscript, which he immediately threw out of the bus window. Herzog claims that he cannot remember what he wrote on these pages so they didn't end up in the final script so weren't shot. I can't imagine those pages could have made the film any better.
Klaus Kinski as Don Lope de Aguirre with a little monkey
Aguirre, the Wrath of God was filmed on location in the Peruvian rainforest, Machu Picchu and on the Amazon River tributaries of the Ucayali region.
The film was shot in five weeks following nine months of pre-production planning and Herzog shot the film in chronological order to capture the continuity of the weather and the physical deterioration of the cast as they struggle through the rainforest and float on rafts down rivers.
The whole Klaus Kinski / Werner Herzog thing is a vast and turbulent subject which really deserves a dedicated blog in all honesty.
The film was made for $370,000
(equivalent to $2.8m in 2024)
that sounds expensive for a film with a small cast of many non-actors shot on location but one third of that budget $124k ($934k in 2024) was just for Kinski's salary.
Klaus Kinski & Werner Herzog on location
Aguirre's musical score was performed by Popol Vuh, a West German progressive/Krautrock band. The band was formed in 1969 by keyboardist Florian Fricke, who had known Herzog for several years prior to the formation of the band.
Aguirre was only the first of many collaborations between the band and the director.
Roger Ebert wrote in The Chicago Sun Times, "The music sets the tone. It is haunting, ecclesiastical, human and yet something else ... The music is crucial to Aguirre, the Wrath of God".
Part of the film's funding came from the West German television station "Hessischer Rundfunk" part of the deal was they got to televise the film on the same day it opened in theatres. Herzog blames this for the relatively poor box office success in Germany.
Which makes perfect sense because outside Germany the film became an "enormous cult favorite" in Mexico, Venezuela, and Algiers. The film had a theatrical run of fifteen months in Paris.
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" didn't receive a theatrical release in the United States until 1977 where it immediately became a cult film. New Yorker Films the company that released the film in the states reported four years after its initial release ,that it was the only film in their catalog that never went out of circulation. So best of luck to anyone who wants to calculate what it has made at the global box office!
Aguirre went on to win several prestigious film awards.
In 1973 it won the Deutscher Filmpreis (German Film Award) for "Outstanding Individual Achievement: Cinematography".
In 1976 it was voted the "Best Foreign Film" by the French Syndicate of Film Critics.
In 1977 the National Society of Film Critics in the United States gave it their
"Best Cinematography" Award.
It won the prestigious Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association in 1976.
The film has only grown in popularity since 1972,
American film critic J. Hoberman wrote in 2006 that Aguirre "is not just a great movie but an essential one ... Herzog's third feature ... is both a landmark film and a magnificent social metaphor".
Roger Ebert included it on his list of The Great Movies, Martin Scorsese included on the list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker" he compiled in 2014.
Herzog on location
In 1999, Rolling Stone included the film on the magazine's "100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years" list. The film was included in Time magazine's "All Time 100 Best Films", Entertainment Weekly named it the 46th greatest cult film ever made, It was ranked #19 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.
This film is kinda a big deal.
One last nugget of info before we move on,
While Herzog was scouting for locations for Aguirre in Peru, his reservation on LANSA Flight 508 was canceled due to a last minute change of plan.
LANSA Flight 508 disintegrated in mid-air after being struck by lightning and crashed into the Amazon rainforest in killing 91 people on board a 17-year-old girl Juliane Koepcke was the sole survivor.
In 1998 Herzog made a documentary film "Wings of Hope" about the crash and Koepcke's miraculous survival from the crash that would have claimed his life.
Juliane Koepcke and Werner Herzog at the crash site in 1998.
In 1974 Werner Herzog made the documentary
"The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner"
the film tells the story of Walter Steiner, a celebrated ski jumper of his era who worked full-time as a carpenter while he pursued the dangerous world record for ski flying.
This film is significant because it was the first time Herzog appeared in a documentary and he provides the voice over narration, Something that will become his trademark in documentary filmmaking.
Herzog has said he considers it one of his
"most important films."
In the early 1970's Herzog watched an experimental documentary directed by Lutz Eisholz called "BRUNO THE BLACK - ONE DAY A HUNTER BLEW HIS HORN"
the film follows an eccentric working class outcast Bruno S, who prowls the city as a street musician, performing his own songs.
Werner was spellbound and instantly wanted to work with Bruno S
I am not a health professional but it appears to me Bruno S (aka Bruno Schleinstein) seemed to have been on the autistic spectrum and comes off as a "Savant" but that is just my observation and opinion.
Bruno was born in Germany in 1932. tragically he suffered a very abusive childhood where he was regularly and severely beaten and ended up spending the majority of his youth in mental institutions (considering when and where he was born i'm surprised he survived) He was a self-taught musician, who over the years became a skilled pianist and accordion player. He also played glockenspiel and handbells.
In his town he was known for spending his weekends playing in courtyards performing 18th- and 19th-century-style ballads. Bruno survived by working as a forklift driver at a car plant Monday to Friday.
Schleinstein always said he transmitted his songs, rather than perform them.
It was his street performances which brought him to the attention of Lutz Eisholz who made the documentary that Herzog saw, which led him to cast Bruno S as the lead actor in his next film despite the fact that he had no training as an actor.
"The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" (1974)
Directed by Werner Herzog, Written by Werner Herzog, Produced by Werner Herzog & Walter Saxer, Music by Florian Fricke, Cinematography by Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein, Edited by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus, Starring Bruno S., Walter Ladengast.
When Kaspar Hauser, a young German man, is suddenly released from the existence of inexplicable confinement, he is forced into regular society.
Barely capable of communicating, Hauser is exploited in a circus sideshow until he is taken under the wing of the kindhearted Professor Daumer, who slowly helps him acclimate to conventional life, even teaching him to read and write. Despite his best efforts, however, Hauser may not be able to escape the horrors of his past.
The film is about Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained up in a tiny cellar with only a toy wooden horse for company. Denied any human contact except for a man wearing a black overcoat and top hat, who fed him. One day in 1828 his top hat wearing keeper taught him a couple of phrases and set him free into society.
Pretty bonkers! It is actually a true story!
The film was written by Herzog by closely following the real story of foundling Kaspar Hauser, using the text of actual letters found with Hauser.
Even though he was not a trained actor he is excellent in this film and he even instinctively became a method actor he remained in costume for the entire duration of the production, even after shooting was done for the day. Herzog once visited him in his hotel room, to find him sleeping on the floor by the door, in his costume.
The film screened at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival where It won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, which is the second prize at Cannes, it won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.
The film won two German Film Awards: to Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus for editing, and to Henning von Gierke for scene design.
Herzog won the second prize in the category "Feature Film Direction" which came with a substantial cash prize.
The film was selected as the West German entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 48th Academy Awards, but the academy did not accept it as a nomination.
After the critical success of
"The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser"
or as it was called in Germany
"Every Man for Himself and God Against All" and the cash prize it won facilitated Herzog to make his next film project.
Inspired by a story by German writer Herbert Achternbusch.
"Heart of Glass" (1976)
Directed by Werner Herzog, Written by Werner Herzog & Herbert Achternbusch,
Produced by Werner Herzog, Music by Popol Vuh, Cinematography by Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein, Edited by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus, Starring Josef Bierbichler,
Stefan Güttler, Clemens Scheitz & Sonja Skiba.
In a rural community, a local artist known for making brilliant glass sculptures dies without passing on to anyone the skills of his trade. Huttenbesitzer, who owns the town's glass factory, obsessively attempts to recover the deceased artist's lost knowledge. The villagers employed by Huttenbesitzer also become bewitched by the secrets of glass. Despite the warnings of Hias, who claims to be a prophet, the possessed locals slowly descend into madness.
The film is set in an 18th-century Bavarian town with a glassblowing factory. The film was mostly shot on location in Bavaria just a few miles from the village of Sachrang where Herzog spent his childhood. Herzog also filmed in Switzerland but the end of the film was actually shot on the Skellig Islands, two small rocky islands off the west coast of Ireland.
Herzog, along with other members of the crew actually appear in the film as the men carrying a load of ruby glass to the river.
"Heart of Glass" premiered at the 1976 London Film festival.
I have kinda "buried the lead" regarding this film but I will end part one of this blog with the fact that....
During the making of this film almost all of the actors performed while under hypnosis!
Every actor in every scene was hypnotized, only the character Hias and the professional glass blowers who appear in the film are not.
The hypnosis facilitates some very strange performances, Herzog wanted to suggest the trance-like state of the townspeople as they are bewitched by Hias in the story.
Herzog coached the actors with their dialogue during hypnosis. However, many of the hypnotised actors' gestures and movements occurred spontaneously during filming.
End of Part One.
