Werner Herzog
52 connections found
Filmography
Queen of the Desert 2015 
Rescue Dawn 2007 
Fitzcarraldo 1982 
Cave of Forgotten Dreams 2010 
Grizzly Man 2005 
Lessons of Darkness 1992 
Woyzeck 1979 
Aguirre, the Wrath of God 1972 
Fata Morgana 1972 
Nosferatu the Vampyre 1979 
Heart of Glass 1976 
Encounters at the End of the World 2007 
Into the Abyss 2011 
Stroszek 1977 
The White Diamond 2004 
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans 2009 
Even Dwarfs Started Small 1970 
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser 1974 
Invincible 2001 View:
Connections, in both directions
The Lost City of Z (2017)
Directed by James Gray
influenced by Fitzcarraldo (1982), Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
Visuals Characters
A nod to Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo is one – a gorgeously odd segment in which Fawcett and his team stumble upon an opera performance deep in the heart of the jungle.
Influence is everywhere but never overwhelms: the splendorous grandeur of Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon,” the striking photography of Vittorio Storraro, the torch-lit nights of “Apocalypse Now,” and one direct homage to Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” another picture beset by the madness of obsession (though it’s not the Where’s Waldo of cinema either).
He’s an upstanding Englishman, selfless and heroic, always trying to keep his emotions under wraps, and yet he has that same zealous, obsessive quality that Klaus Kinski brought to his roles as men on mad quests in Aguirre, Wrath Of God or Fitzcarraldo.
Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo is even quoted in a luminous scene featuring an opera house in the middle of the jungle.
Though visually resembling Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God, with hallucinatory night-time jungle scenes recalling Apocalypse Now, Gray’s exploration into a driven individual’s morality more resembles Lawrence of Arabia in tone, and he largely succeeds in managing the same coupling of lush, lyrically expressive imagery with rich emotional resonance.
A jaw-droppingly surreal interlude in which Fawcett stumbles on an opera house in a clearing nods to “Fitzcarraldo,” while a sudden ambush signaled by a deadly rain of arrows is scarcely Gray’s sole invocation of “Apocalypse Now.”
With Bram Stoker's "Dracula" in the public domain by this time, Herzog was able to use most of the characters from that novel (though, oddly enough, he switched the identities of Lucy and friend Mina) while retaining the story of filmmaker F.W. Murnau's original.
The original "Nosferatu," based on "Dracula" by the brilliant Bram Stoker, was reportedly made without consent of adapting the famous story.
Other standouts in Herzog’s cast include Roland Topor as Dracula’s insane manservant, Renfield, and Walter Ladengast as Dr. Van Helsing, who is much more devoted to science here than in other film versions of the Bram Stoker’s story.
Murnau changed the character names for copyright reasons, and Herzog was free to use the originals: Dracula ( Klaus Kinski ), the land agent Jonathan Harker ( Bruno Ganz ), his wife Lucy ( Isabelle Adjani ), Dr. Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast), and he of the maniacal laugh, Renfield ( Roland Topor ).
And, while other versions, such as the 1931 Bela Lugosi interpretation or the 1958 Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing Horror of Dracula, have their adherents, none can match the Murnau edition for atmosphere and eerieness.
Yes, like many other Dracula movies, this one condenses and simplifies the core characters down to Jonathan Harker, Lucy, Van Helsing, Renfield and Dracula; Mina is here but as a minor character, a friend to Lucy who exists just to die.
Up (2009)
Directed by Pete Docter
influenced by Fitzcarraldo (1982), The White Diamond (2004)
Visuals
Directors Pete Docter (“Monsters, Inc.”) and Bob Peterson and their co-screenwriter Tom McCarthy brilliantly draw on such cinematic touchstones as “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Wizard of Oz.” They’re also inspired by less likely sources such as “Fitzcarraldo,” “The Red Balloon” and Jules Verne’s “The Lost World” — not to mention Warner Bros.’ animated Road Runner and even the logo of its archrival, DreamWorks Animation.
He earns it the hard way, helping Carl drag his hovering home through the South American jungle in a fashion that pays subtle tribute to Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo .
Up may be the first animated kiddie crowd-pleaser to feature dentures and an hommage to Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, as old man and boy drag a house and the burden of dreams through the jungle.
Rather than give up his dreams in old age and enter assisted living, Carl—an accomplished balloon salesman in his time—ties some thousands of balloons (echoes of Herzog’s The White Diamond) to his home and makes way for Paradise Falls, South America, the wish-fulfilling journey he and Ellie never made in her lifetime.
(His images of the oil fields burning in the night, while clearly inspired by Werner Herzog’s stunning 1992 documentary “Lessons of Darkness,” have a terrifying and hallucinatory beauty to them.)
Take a look at Werner Herzog’s fascinating docu, “Lessons of Darkness,” about the oil fire fighters in post-Gulf War Kuwait, and you’ll see what a good job “Jarhead” does in its depiction.
Roger Ebert, who considers this film one of the best ever made, calls it "foolhardy", and compares it to other mad masterworks like Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924) and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979).
The concept of a lead character who was raised in nature and isolated from the rest of humanity aligns Hanna with classic films like François Truffaut’s The Wild Child or Werner Herzog’s The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, but Wright and his screenwriters, Seth Lochhead and David Farr, don’t study their heroine’s cultural miscues all that closely.
Jungle Cruise (2021)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
influenced by Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Plot Characters
There’s a whole list of cinematic inspirations, really, which would surprisingly include Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid .
In fact, one could also make the argument that it’s more indebted to Humphrey Bogart’s The African Queen and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God than to the ride.
Aguirre was a real person, a cruel and vile human, who most modern viewers probably know from Werner Herzog’s magnificent Aguirre, the Wrath of God, with an unhinged Klaus Kinski starring as the titular terror.
Movie fans may remember Aguirre from Werner Herzog's masterpiece Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), wherein he searched the Amazon for the lost city of gold, El Dorado (he was also a real person).
Perhaps Disney’s remake of “Fitzcarraldo” will fare better.
In this regard, compare the film with Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005), the documentary about self-styled grizzly bear activist Timothy Treadwell, who was killed by the very animals he sought to protect.
The audacity of a commitment that contains such a high potential for death brings to mind the story of Timothy Treadwell ( "Grizzly Man," a Werner Herzog documentary), another adventurer who engaged in a dangerous enterprise in a remote location.
Werner Herzog’s “ Grizzly Man ” documents the life and death of another soul who sought spiritual purity in an environment that was drawn more from Hobbes than Thoreau.
Consider Timothy Treadwell, whose video diary of life among the Alaskan grizzlies was chronicled in Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man.
I couldn't help but think of another film about an idealist who got in trouble from romanticising the Alaskan wilderness, Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man , but while that film was almost comically happy to indict the protagonist's idiocy, Penn clearly expects us to regard McCandless's fate as a beautiful tragedy.
Both the cruel beauty of the film and this quality of its main character call to mind Werner Herzog’s similar, and similarly brilliant, documentary “Grizzly Man,” about Timothy Treadwell, a nature lover who lived among the bears in Alaska and treated them as big fluffy pets, until they ate him.
And, while other versions, such as the 1931 Bela Lugosi interpretation or the 1958 Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing Horror of Dracula, have their adherents, none can match the Murnau edition for atmosphere and eerieness.
Unimpressed, Taiwan’s post-war generation, including Yang himself deserted film in the 70s—had he not found himself heavily inspired by Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, perhaps Taiwan would never have experienced the beauty of the auteur’s work.
In one scene Herzog records them watching the 1954 movie Them!, in which the scientist-hero, beleaguered by giant radioactive ants, cries, "We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophesy come true, where the Beast will reign over the Earth."
The subtext, which bubbles to the surface in amusing fashion when Herzog films a team of biologists kicking back to enjoy a screening of the sci-fi environmental disaster flick Them! , is that when the earth decides to take its revenge, it won't be pretty.
The Revenant (2015)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
influenced by Fitzcarraldo (1982), Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
Visuals Themes
The Revenant's focus on setting already makes it feel like a follow-up to Werner Herzog's classics Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, The Wrath Of God.
Filmed in Canada and Argentina (filming took so long that the snow melted!), its reputation of having had a difficult shoot has given it the allure of being some grand artistic achievement on the same level as Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) or Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982).
He endures a lot for his art (one of the books that will be written about The Revenant will be about the legendary difficulty of the shoot, about the conditions the cast and crew endured and how Inarritu seemed as mad as Werner Herzog on the set of Fitzcarraldo or Francis Ford Coppola on Apocalypse Now), but the most impressive acting is Hardy's transformation into the amoral, mercury-tongued Fitzgerald.
The main difference between The Revenant and, say, Apocalypse Now or Fitzcarraldo —two flawed epics that were, indeed, allegories of themselves and pretty important ventures, all things considered—is that there’s no real madness in it.
The Revenant is his Fitzcarraldo , a film whose behind-the-scenes agony has become indistinguishable from that of the characters.
There are also elements of “Gladiator” (Glass’ visions of his dead wife), “Fitzcarraldo” (in Glass’ obsession and determination) and “The New World” (in the visual style carried over by Terence Malick’s cinematographer and production designer).
The Coens' direction of their actors reminded me of the time Werner Herzog reportedly hypnotized his cast for "Heart of Glass" - everyone but their lead, with the exception of Jessica McManus, is preternaturally calm (or stoned) and speaks in a quasi-reassuring monotone.
It is, Randa promises, “the land where God did not finish Creation”—a line borrowed from the opening of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo.
The Wild Child (1970)
Directed by François Truffaut
influenced The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
Visuals Plot
The outsider�s "terribly hard fall" into civilization, imagined by Werner Herzog as a rough-ethereal Kokoschka canvas far from the Chardin of The Wild Child.
The film is often linked with Truffaut's " The Wild Child " (1970), set in the same century, about a boy who emerged from the forest possibly having been raised by animals.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by Lessons of Darkness (1992)
Themes
We're variously reminded of Greed, Citizen Kane, Days of Heaven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even Werner Herzog's oil-fire documentary, Lessons of Darkness — all better movies on similar themes.
The Northman (2022)
Directed by Robert Eggers
influenced by Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
Visuals
Though his classical style still owes a sizable debt to Scandinavian film legends like Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer, The Northman feels most like Eggers’ faithful tribute to Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God , imbuing landscapes with a sinister presence that justifies the spiraling mental states of those foolhardy enough to try to tame them.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced by Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
Themes Visuals
Roger Ebert, who considers this film one of the best ever made, calls it "foolhardy", and compares it to other mad masterworks like Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924) and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979).
Seven years before Apocalypse Now , young Bavarian director Werner Herzog embarked on his own journey into the heart of darkness.
Only a handful of modern films share the audacity of his vision; I think of “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” and “ Apocalypse Now .”
Francis Ford Coppola was clearly influenced by this film when he made “Apocalypse Now” several years later.
And the film is also a precursor to Coppola's Apocalypse Now as the rafts drift silently down the Amazon with its unseen enemies, muddled motivations and ill-defined destination.
Valhalla Rising (2010)
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
influenced by Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Themes Visuals
With gaping eyes and perpetual apprehensiveness, the boy functions like one of the sidelined women in Aguirre, the Wrath of God, a film that Valhalla Rising rather baldly imitates, but with less consistent brio or verve.
Invoking The New World, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and the "Dawn of Man"sequence in 2001, Bronson director Nicolas Winding Refn's mesmerizing 12th-century odyssey into the heart of darkness stars a mute Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale's villain) as One Eye, a brooding Norse warrior-slave who slaughters his pagan captors and leads a boatload of Christian Vikings to the Holy Land.
Werner Herzog has proven that time and again, from Aguirre: The Wrath of God (with which Valhalla Rising bears resemblance) and Fitzcarraldo all the way to Rescue Dawn and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
Previously he had explored the more closed-in spaces of Europe in the German language films "Alice in the Cities" (1974) and "Kings of the Road" (1976) but with "Paris, Texas" (1984) he turned his gaze (and Robbie Müller´s) to the wide-open highways and byways of America which fascinated so many European directors (Wenders´ New German Cinema compatriot Werner Herzog took a similar turn in 1977´s "Stroszek.")
This artificiality can perhaps be attributed to German-born Wim Wenders’ perception of the American Midwest (a perception also evident in Werner Herzog’s Stroszek and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point).
(It's a look at Americans as kind-eyed aliens that serves as an almost unbearably piquant counterpart to New German Cinema-mate Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas.)