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Werner Herzog |
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Director / Screenwriter /
Producer |
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1942 - |
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Born September 5,
Munich, Germany |
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Key
Production Countries: Germany, France, USA, UK |
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Key Genres:
Documentary, Adventure
Drama, Adventure, Drama, Avant-garde/Experimental |
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Key
Collaborators: Beate
Mainka-Jellinghaus
(Editor), Joe Bini (Editor), Popol Vuh
(Composer), Thomas Mauch (Cinematographer), Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein
(Cinematographer), Peter Zeitlinger (Cinematographer), Klaus Kinski
(Leading Player), Lucki Stipetic (Producer),
Brad Dourif (Leading Character Player), Henning
von Gierke (Production Designer) |
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Recommended: Signs
of Life (1968), Land of Silence and Darkness
(1971), Fata Morgana (1971), Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972)*, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
(1974), The
Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)*, Stroszek (1977), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Lessons of Darkness (1992)*,
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)**, My Best Fiend
(1999), Grizzly Man (2005)^, Into the Abyss (2011) |
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Worth a Look: Even
Dwarfs Started Small (1970), God's Angry Man [TV] (1980), Fitzcarraldo
(1982)*, Cobra Verde (1987), The White Diamond, (2004), Bad Lieutenant:
Port of Call - New Orleans (2009), Cave of Forgotten
Dreams (2010) |
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Approach with Caution:
Heart of Glass (1976), Scream of Stone (1991), The Wild Blue Yonder (2005) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; ^
Listed in TSPDT's
21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films
section;
**
Listed in TSPDT's
Ain't Nobody's Blues But My Own
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Werner
Herzog Film ] [
Guardian Articles ] [
Strictly
Film School ] [
TIME Interview (2009) ] [
Baseline
Biography ] [
MovieMaker
Article: The Enigma of Werner Herzog ] [
Conversation
with Roger Ebert (2005) ] [
kamera Article
] [
Wikipedia
] [
New York
Magazine Article (2007 ] [
Filmmaker Article (2007) ] [
The Believer: Conversation with Errol Morris (2008) ] [
A.V. Club Interview (2011)
] [
Moving Image Source Article (2008) ]
[
Werner Herzog's Rogue Film
School ] [
Vice Interview ] |
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Books: [
Every Night the Trees Disappear: Werner Herzog and
the Making of Heart of Glass ] [
A Companion to Werner Herzog ] [
Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo ] [
The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth ] [
Herzog
on Herzog ] [
Werner
Herzog ] [
Werner
Herzog (Arte Edition) ] [
The
Films of Werner Herzog: Between Mirage and History ] [
Images
at the Horizon: A Workshop with Werner Herzog ] [
Fitzcarraldo: The Original Story ] |
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"Fond of
shooting in difficult locations, he can seem as eccentric and
driven as one of his heroes. Recently he appears to have found
it difficult to continue making films, but his visionary work
of the 70s constitutes a high point of the modern cinema." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"It was
immediately clear that Herzog possessed a quick sense of
narrative; a withdrawn, mobile camera; and a dark, inquisitive
humour...As attention fell on Herzog, so his pursuit of
extremism became a little more studied; it began to seem more
zealous than natural...Herzog pictures were events in the
seventies, but they became very hard to see, Fitzcarraldo
was the last film to get wide screenings" -
David
Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)
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"Werner
Herzog, more than any director of his generation, has through
his films embodied German history, character, and cultural
richness. While references to verbal and other visual arts would
be out of place in treating most film directors, they are key to
understanding Herzog. For his techniques he reaches back into
the early part of the twentieth century to the Expressionist
painters and filmmakers, back to the Romantic painters and
writers for the luminance and allegorization of landscape and
the human figure." -
Rodney
Farnsworth (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998)
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"One of the best of the new wave of German filmmakers, Herzog
has already mastered themes of illusion, delusion, alienation,
and hypocrisy." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"There are
certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to
mainstream audiences. If you've got Tom Cruise as a strongman,
I'm sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn't have
the same substance." -
Werner
Herzog |
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"I cannot
work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just
releasing a film is hard." -
Werner Herzog |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include Woyzeck (1978),
Where the Green Ants Dream (1984), Portrait Werner Herzog (1986), Bells
from the Deep (1995), Invincible (2001), Rescue
Dawn (2006), Encounters at the End of the World (2007), and My Son, My
Son, What Have Ye Done (2009). |
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8+ |
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"Werner
Herzog is regarded as one of the most eccentric figures of
das neue kino. His films feature inspiring landscapes and
controversial actors (the flamboyant Klaus Kinski, the
strange Bruno S.) at odds with their world. Herzog is also
well known for the making of his films, whether hypnotizing
the entire cast in Heart of Glass (1976), dragging a
boat through the Amazon jungle for Aguirre, the Wrath of
God (1972), or feuding with actor Kinski… One of the
leading figures of the New German Cinema, he has remained a
radical individualist and a cinematic visionary for over
forty years. His films disturb by their questioning of the
bases of human civilization and its values."
-
Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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21st Century Top
50 |
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●
23 Best Film Directors in the World
Today (The Guardian, 2012) |
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100 Essential Directors (Pop
Matters) |
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●
Gerald Peary's Magnificent Seven (2006) |
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● The Wild Bunch... 50 of the Movies' Maddest Visionaries |
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●
501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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●
Theo
Angelopoulos |
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Francis
Ford Coppola |
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Alexander
Dovzhenko |
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
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Robert
Flaherty |
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Jim Jarmusch |
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Alexander
Kluge |
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F.W.
Murnau |
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Godfrey Reggio (external link) |
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Nicolas Roeg |
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Andrei
Tarkovsky |
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Peter
Weir |
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Werner Herzog's Favourites |
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Freaks (1932)
Tod Browning,
Intolerance (1916)
D.W. Griffith,
Nosferatu (1922)
F.W. Murnau,
Rashomon (1950)
Akira Kurosawa,
Where is the Friend's Home? (1987)
Abbas Kiarostami.
Source:
Rotten Tomatoes
(2009) |
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