Werner Herzog Season: Preview

Werner Herzog Season: Preview

22 September, 2009
by: Miguel Cullen

There is a well-known story of the filming of Werner Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath of God. The film was being shot deep in the Peruvian jungle, with the notoriously volatile Klaus Kinski starring. Ten days before the end of shooting, Kinski flew into one of his usual rages, and tried to leave the set on a speed boat. Herzog approached him and said very calmly: "I have a rifle. You might reach the next bend in the river but you would have eight bullets through your head. And guess who gets the ninth?"

The film was finished with Kinski, and went on to be considered among cult legend Herzog's best output. This autumn, London plays host to a Herzog season which sees 17 of the Academy award-nominated director's films shown in a series of original pop-up venues across the capital.

The settings are carefully chosen to chime with the film of choice; for example Heart of Glass is shown in the Victorian Glasshouse of the Horniman Museum in Lewisham, and the Halloween screening of Herzog's Dracula homage Nosferatu is set in the suitably gothic Old Biscuit Factory in Bermondsey. Other unique settings include the chapel of the 19th century workhouse which now houses the Cinema Museum in Elephant & Castle, where the screening of Herzog's film about the real-life murderous 16th century composer, Carlo Gesualdo - Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices will be set.

Herzog himself will be in conversation at the Royal Festival Hall on October 3. The public interview will form the part of a live performance called The Conquest of the Useless [by Intelligence Squared, an organisation which has staged debates with Charles Saatchi, George Steiner and Boris Johnson] including a selection of images, music and film clips.

The name 'The Conquest of the Useless' is derived from a book Herzog wrote about the huge problems faced when filming Fitzcarraldo, another movie set hundreds of miles away from civilisation in the Peruvian jungle. The film's central image is that of a 320-ton steamer being hauled up a jungle cliff by indigenous natives, without special effects. Herzog remembered in interviews that the steel cables used to drag the ship would 'break like a thin thread. There's so much pressure that the cable is red hot, glowing inside.' Kinski incited more death-wishes; his rages upset the indian extras so much that they offered to have him killed. The film would win Herzog 'Best Director' at Cannes in 1982.

Impossible anecdotes dog Herzog - perhaps this is because of his insistence on extreme measures, like filming impossible stunts without special effects. Talking again of the making of Fitzcarraldo, he has said that many of the singular aspects in the film are created by the real events themselves [dragging a ship over a cliff]. He calls this his 'ecstatic truth'. This idea, which involved sticking to reality, would prompt the use of local extras who had never acted before.

Films like Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Cobra Verde, and scores more of his exotically-placed films owe much of their power to their location, which Herzog exposes extensively, calling the setting's power the 'voodoo of location'.

A more recent Herzog documentary that everyone has heard of is Grizzly Man, the story of Timothy Treadwell, a grizzly bear enthusiast who spent 13 summers in the direct company of bears in Alaska before being killed by one. There is a scene showing Herzog listening with horror to the audio of Treadwell being mauled - but he has the tact to withold the footage from the listener.

He is the perpetual director of quixotic characters who chase their fantasies in godforsaken lands, conjuring up wild circuses of the imagination. See a wide range of his work at various cinemas and pop-up venues across London from now until October 31st.

For tickets and full listings:
www.v22collection.com

For further information on the conversation with Werner Herzog:
www.intelligencesquared.com

Miguel Cullen