The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1967)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG

Country: WEST GERMANY

The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz is a short fourteen minute film written, directed, and produced by Bavaria’s finest filmmaker Werner Herzog. It was his third film, following on from his debut short Herakles (1962) and the mysterious and totally obscure Game in the Sand (1964). The latter is a film that Herzog has consistently refused to distribute, and will almost certainly remain hidden, owning to subject matter that still leaves the director disturbed. Fortress Deutschkreuz was Herzog’s first attempt at fiction, and as such it can be seen as something of a dress rehearsal for his first feature film Signs of Life which would follow in 1968. Both films explore the psychology of warfare, as the protagonists do battle with imaginary enemies. Signs of Life benefited tremendously from its beautiful Crete locations, brought vividly to monochrome life by the cinematography of Thomas Mauch, and the brilliantly unhinged performance of Peter Brogle as the brittle fantasist Stroszek. Fortress Deutschkreuz by contrast is still a little uneven and crude in places and the quality of the transfer I viewed does not aid its cause. However it does set up a satirical attitude to warfare that Herzog would develop and refine throughout his career.

No One Will Play With Me (1976)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG

Country: WEST GERMANY

This unusual and obscure little film from Werner Herzog emerged in between his two feature films The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) and Heart of Glass (1976). The former is quite rightly lauded as one of Herzog’s finest achievements, and introduced the world to the bizarre talents of the non-professional actor Bruno S. The latter was a challenging fable of prophecy and apocalypse, a highly stylised and visionary film in which the director famously hypnotised the majority of the cast members. It seems odd that Herzog would return to the short film at this stage in his career. His previous short film was made seven years before and was entitled Precautions Against Fanatics (1969), and in that time he had achieved his international breakthrough with feature films like Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972), the aforementioned Kaspar Hauser, and critically acclaimed documentaries such as Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) and The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner (1974), both of which were made for West German television, but achieved wider distribution due to the directors new found fame.

Herakles (1962)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

This short nine minute film would be totally insignificant were it not for the fact that it marked the debut to filmmaking of Werner Herzog. The barmy Bavarian was a mere twenty years old when he wrote, directed, produced, and edited this somewhat amateurish effort. It is fair to say that Herakles was an exercise; an experiment on Herzog’s part to see if he could actually make a film. But even at this early stage Herzog’s decision to shoot on 35mm film shows that he had ambitions that far exceeded the humble nature of this production. But Herakles was an instructive lesson, especially for a young man who largely existed in a world without cinematic reference points, and whose influences were extremely limited. In this film Herzog explores the art of editing, and although Herakles is little more than an editorial exercise, it does contain a few images that will be of interest to Herzog enthusiasts. 

The Ruthless Four (1968)

Dir: GIORGIO CAPITANI
Country: ITALY/WEST GERMANY

AKA:
Chacun Pour Soi
Every Man for Himself
Sam Cooper's Gold
The Goldseekers

It’s always a pleasure to discover a hidden gem, but unfortunately it is an increasingly rare occurrence nowadays. This is especially so in a cycle as dense and derivative as the Euro-Western. But my interest in the Euro-Western was recently piqued again by the purchase of an excellent book called Any Gun Can Play, written by Kevin Grant, and published by FAB Press in 2011. If hidden cinematic gems are rare, then well written books on film are like goldust. The Ruthless Four (one of many titles it was released under) is one such discovery, and the analogy with gold is appropriate, for the film charts the damaging and corrosive effect, this particular precious metal can have on human beings. There are certain themes and concerns that are endemic in the Euro Western, and one theme this cycle returns to time and again is greed. This theme is of course also present in both traditional American westerns, and the revisionist westerns that followed in the wake of A Fistful of Dollars (1964). But the difference lies in the way that this theme is presented. The traditional western always seeks to emphasise the positive aspects of its principal themes, and greed exists as part of a cross-current of themes that ultimately serve a redemptive plot. In many European examples greed is the entire raison d’être of the film, with screenplays often allowing no room for anything else, as they explore its acidic effect.

The Red Circle (1960)

Dir: JURGEN ROLAND
Country: WEST GERMANY/DENMARK

AKA:
Der Rote Kreis
The Crimson Circle

The Red Circle was the second Edgar Wallace krimi produced by Preben Phillipsen under the auspices of Danish studio Rialto. The surprise commercial success of The Fellowship of the Frog in West Germany necessitated a continuation of the series, and by and large The Red Circle faithfully follows the formula set up in the previous film. The novel was published in 1922 under the title The Crimson Circle, and has proved one of the most durable and oft adapted of Wallace’s crime novels. The first version appeared in the same year the book saw print, and was a British film directed by George Ridgwell. In 1929 a second version appeared, an Anglo-German production helmed by Frederic Zelnick. In 1940 another sole British venture appeared directed by Reginald Denham. These three treatments remain obscure and hard to find, and the 1960 version directed by Jürgen Roland is the most successful and visible. In saying that though, the Rialto film can still be a pain in the arse to track down for a reasonable price, but part of the fun of researching an area such as this is the leg work involved in securing a decent print. I may be in a minority in thinking that this is a culturally significant movie, and the poverty of critical thinking, or even cursory reviews in the English language on the internet, would seem to confirm my minority status. It’s a status I share with fellow scribe and krimi enthusiast Holger Haase, and I doff my hat to him for treading the dark and shadowy streets of Wallace’s London before me.

Fellowship of the Frog (1959)

Dir: HARALD REINL
Country: WEST GERMANY/DENMARK

AKA:
Der Frosch mit der Maske
Face of the Frog

I’ve felt for quite some time certain dissatisfaction with the amount of column inches afforded to the Edgar Wallace krimi cycle within cult circles. This particular series of films has become one of the major losers in discussions of cult film. It becomes all the more surprising when one considers its close proximity to the Italian giallo. Whilst popular Italian cycles have enjoyed fetishistic attention (I myself am a party to this) others have been bizarrely written out of history. Of course part of the problem lies in the area of distribution, but of the forty titles that make up the Rialto produced Edgar Wallace series (the so called ‘official’ cycle), all have enjoyed legitimate DVD releases. When one goes beyond the Rialto films, one discovers a number of cash-ins based on the work of his son Bryan Edgar Wallace, and numerous films that weren’t based on either Wallace, but instead imitated the conventions of the Rialto films. These titles are much harder to track down, but then what else is a film scholar supposed to do? It’s important to remember that the term krimi in German simply refers to any film featuring elements of crime, murder, and detection; therefore the Wallace films do not have ownership of it. But what they do have is a style and mood all of their own, and hopefully over the coming months we can explore it together.

Circus of Fear (1966)

Dir: JOHN MOXEY
Country: UK/WEST GERMANY

aka:
Psycho-Circus
Circus of Terror

Circus of Fear is a solid if underwhelming crime thriller derived from the Edgar Wallace novel The Three Just Men (1926). It is not as some might assume a horror film despite the appearance of Christopher Lee. Lee spends the majority of the film underneath a black hood, and is only a visible screen presence in the last ten minutes or so. The casting of Klaus Kinski in a typically brief and totally pointless cameo however is a stronger indication of this films relationship to the West German ‘krimi’ films. This cycle of movies, almost exclusively based upon the stories of Edgar Wallace reached a point of saturation in the 1960’s and in certain regards were a major influence on the embryonic first steps of the Italian giallo film. There is a definite relationship between the two, one which generally seems to be overlooked in histories of the form. If there is ever an area of popular European cinema worthy of further elucidation and research then it is certainly the Wallace ‘krimi’ movies. Circus of Fear is an Anglo-German co-production, and the film as a result benefits from some intriguing casting decisions. The main creative force behind it was Harry Alan Towers, a significant producer of low budget genre pictures in the 60’s and 70’s who in this case also put his hand to writing the screenplay. Perhaps the less said about that the better; this is a highly confusing and clumsily plotted movie which is unable to make full and proper use of an interesting ensemble cast.

Stroszek (1977)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

One of the meta-narratives or major thematic concerns that preoccupied the generation of filmmakers that made up what scholars termed ‘New German Cinema’ was coming to terms with, and exploring, the cultural colonisation wrought on West Germany in the aftermath of World War Two by America. Wim Wenders approached the subject from the perspective of cinema itself in The American Friend (1977) and Kings of the Road (1976) and throughout his career revised the form of the road movie for a generation of alienated Europeans. Rainer Werner Fassbinder opted to explore the question through a reconstitution of Hollywood genre - most notably the Sirkian melodrama of films such as Fear Eats the Soul (1974). Whilst the films of these two ‘New German’ heavyweights were by no means conventional, Werner Herzog’s single contribution to this ongoing narrative is a truly wacky and oddball take on the subject. Stroszek was Herzog’s sixth fictional feature film and it was his first, and to date last, to be set (albeit partially) in contemporary West Germany. Up to this point Herzog had preferred to set his films in the past and in some cases on other continents, and used the storytelling method of allegory, metaphor and symbolism, to make comments on Germany and its recent past. In Stroszek Herzog concocted a narrative (partially based on the childhood experiences of Bruno S.) that enabled him to formulate his view at the time of both West Germany and America. Like most filmmakers of that generation Herzog’s vision is deeply ambivalent, but ultimately he suggests that all countries are alike in the manner in which they can crush the life out of their citizens - the only difference is in the method.

Woyzeck (1979)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

Werner Herzog is well known for his daring approach to filmmaking and for his commitment to taking risks in service of his never ending search for the ‘ecstatic truth’ within an image. But in many ways his boldest filmmaking move occurred during 1978/9 when he made two films back to back that were based on pre-existing material highly venerated in Germany. The first was a remake of F.W. Murnau’s silent expressionistic horror classic Nosferatu (1922) with Klaus Kinski playing the eponymous bloodsucker. The second was the trickier proposition of adapting Georg Buchner’s unfinished play Woyzeck - a demanding work requiring the steely nerve of a major actor to cope with the harrowing treatment the character endures. With just a week off after the completion of shooting on Nosferatu Kinski stepped up to the plate and 18 days later the shooting of Woyzeck was complete and Kinski was able to have his nervous breakdown in peace. The speed with which the film was completed has to be admired and shows an economy of filmmaking from Herzog which has remained unrepeated. To add yet more exhaustion and trauma to the characterisation of Woyzeck Herzog insisted on extremely long unbroken takes - there are in fact only 27 cuts in the whole movie! While this was undoubtedly a major challenge to the actors, it enabled Kinski to probably give the greatest performance of his career.

La Soufriere (1977)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

The subtitle to this short thirty minute documentary from Werner Herzog is 'waiting for an inevitable catastrophe'. Within that statement lies an aspect of Herzog’s approach to cinema that has helped to create a mythology of reckless risk taking, a sense that danger is a fundamental aspect in his never ending search for new images. Although an impression of catastrophe is not inevitable in Herzog’s cinema, there is always an echo within the frame of the extremities and hardships undertaken to achieve the finished product. More so than any other filmmaker, the act of filmmaking itself becomes an essential aspect to understanding the fictional world Herzog creates. The same idea can be usefully applied to his documentaries - but La Soufriere is surely the one in which the spectre of death and destruction looms most palpably in every frame. In late 1976 Herzog along with his two cameramen Jorg Schmidt-Retwein and Edward Lachman travelled to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, an island that had been evacuated due to the imminent explosion of the volcano La Soufriere. However a handful of peasants had remained on the island, despite claims by volcanologists that to do so would mean certain death. Intrigued by this attitude to impending death Herzog was determined to interview these men to get a better understanding of their cavalier approach to life.

Fata Morgana (1971)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

Fata Morgana is the most oblique and inscrutable of Werner Herzog’s early films. It is neither a work of fiction, nor a documentary. But exists within a liminal space between these two spheres of representation. It is totally devoid of plot, employing none of the narrative conventions of Hollywood cinema, preferring to approach time and space from a position of non linearity rather than cause and effect. The editing strategies employed in post-production emphasise this attitude towards time, and the result is a film that has the timeless quality of a myth or a fable. Its position as myth is clearly signposted by Herzog’s inclusion of the Popol Vuh (a Mayan creation myth) which is narrated over the images by German film historian Lotte Eisner. This is further confirmed by a three part structure which gives the film the appearance of a meditative and free flowing essay. The three parts are titled Creation, Paradise and The Golden Age and are an echo of Herzog’s early conception of the film as a science-fiction document of alien visitors recording their findings of a long dead civilisation. The imagery that Herzog selects however often undermines the chapter it is within - The Golden Age for example has a number of deeply ironic and unspeakably sad scenes, and Paradise offers us the vista of a blasted landscape crushed under the unyielding glare of the sun. There is subsequently a deep contradiction at the heart of Fata Morgana, a contradiction that seems to exist within most of Herzog’s films, and which makes the viewing experience an oddly disquieting one.

Heart of Glass (1976)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

aka:
Herz Aus Glas

Heart of Glass is a challenging and demanding film, but almost certainly the clearest statement made by Herzog about the insanity and visionary nature of a fever dream. This time Herzog is concerned with collective hysteria as he charts the gradual breakdown and dissolution of a small community in late 18th century Bavaria. The centrepiece of the village is a factory that produces ruby coloured glass, but when the man entrusted with the secret of the ruby glass dies, taking the secret with him to the grave, the village is plunged into an apocalyptic anarchy that ends with madness and destruction. Herzog opens the film with a beautifully composed shot of a herdsman with his back to camera. An ethereal mist hangs in the cold air, which gives the image an unsettling and disturbing resonance. The sound of Swiss yodellers on the soundtrack only adds to the odd sense of eerie timelessness which opens the film. The herdsmen is Hias (Josef Bierbichler), a man who also possesses the gift of prophecy. What follows is a prophecy of destruction and rebirth, and Herzog fills the screen with one haunting image after another. The clouds resemble rivers in the sky, a waterfall becomes a hypnotic conduit to another plane of existence, and a pool seethes and bubbles as though eager to eject life into a newly formed world. All the while the hypnotic tones of Hias speak a litany of grave pronouncements amid an ever increasing culture of impending doom. There is something revelatory in this imagery, and although it is shot through with destructive pessimisms the music of Popol Vuh creates an uplifting counterpoint to the catastrophe that Hias foresees. There is an odd contradiction here, one which doesn’t resolve itself at all in the film, and makes Heart of Glass a very unsafe viewing experience.

The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG

Country: WEST GERMANY

aka:
Die große Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner

This magnificent documentary is a both a study of sporting endeavour and a journey into the psychology of a man willing to risk his very existence to attain his life long dream of flight. The Swiss ski jumper/flier Walter Steiner is probably Werner Herzog’s perfect protagonist. Steiner is an exceptional and introverted figure, a man on the edge of the world, who lives a life of contrasting and conflicting emotions. On the one hand Steiner lives a simple rural life in which he spends his days quietly carving objects out of wood. He appears unassuming and shy, somewhat awkward and self conscious in front of the camera, although when left to his thoughts is surprisingly eloquent and poetic. Herzog deftly emphasises the mundane aspects of Steiner’s life which allows for a far greater impact when we see Steiner launching himself at ridiculous speeds into the alpine skies and clearing 170 meters. The film opens with this image - a beautiful but eerie shot of Steiner in slow motion, his mouth agape, the mountainous backdrop still and implacable and the ethereal music of Popol Vuh giving the shot a resonance and grandeur that slips it into the realm of the ecstatic.

Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY, PERU, MEXICO.

aka:
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes

In 1972 German filmmaker Werner Herzog travelled into the dark heart of the claustrophobic Peruvian jungle, armed with a camera, a skeleton crew and an army of Indian extras in order to film Aguirre: Wrath of God, an astonishing work of film art that would herald his international breakthrough, and eventually become one of his most celebrated works. On one level Aguirre is an epic adventure film, and as such it has a linear and easy to follow narrative. This linearity marked a break from Herzog’s past efforts. Herzog also cast a recognisable international figure in the shape of Klaus Kinski as the eponymous plotter Aguirre. Therefore its clear that this was a slightly more commercial venture from a director who previously seemed more allied with an Avant-garde style of filmmaking.