Synopses & Reviews
Continually blurring the line between fiction and reality, Werner Herzog has made a career of crossing boundaries and reinventing himself. Since his early emergence as a leader in the New German cinema, Herzog is now widely recognized as one of the most acclaimed and innovative filmmakers of the modern era—as well as one of its most controversial and enigmatic figures.
A Companion to Werner Herzog presents more than two dozen original scholarly essays that probe deeply into various aspects of Herzog’s career and eclectic body of cinematic work. Contributions from internationally recognized film scholars and Herzog experts offer fresh perspectives on such topics as Herzog’s engagement with music and the arts, his self-stylization as a global filmmaker, the director’s Bavarian origins, and even his visionary collaboration—and love-hate relationship—with the late actor Klaus Kinski. Filled with illuminating insights, A Companion to Werner Herzog offers a long-overdue exploration of the life and artistic contributions of one of the true giants of international cinema.
Review
“Brad Prager has collected together a world class and diverse group of scholars to map out with great lucidity the complex interconnectivity of Herzog’s equally diverse oeuvre.”
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Paul Cooke, University of Leeds“Werner Herzog towers as one of world cinema’s most engaging, energetic, and enigmatic directors. A Companion to Werner Herzog charts the career of an extraordinary artist whose only predictable feature remains his unpredictability.”
- Gerd Gemünden, Dartmouth College
“Contrary to his self-presentation, Werner Herzog is a filmmaker profoundly influenced by the history of film, art, and literature and an integral part of the spatial imaginaries and aesthetic sensibilities of the postwar period. It is the main achievement of this anthology expertly put together by Brad Prager to highlight these connections with rich and insightful articles on Herzog and painting, photography, opera, geography, documentary, and the essay film. And at last, we understand the strange power exerted by the chicken in Stroszek…”
- Sabine Hake, The University of Texas at Austin
Synopsis
A Companion to Werner Herzog showcases over two dozen original scholarly essays examining nearly five decades of filmmaking by one of the most acclaimed and innovative figures in world cinema.
- First collection in twenty years dedicated to examining Herzog’s expansive career
- Features essays by international scholars and Herzog specialists
- Addresses a broad spectrum of the director’s films, from his earliest works such as Signs of Life and Fata Morgana to such recent films as The Bad Lieutenant and Encounters at the End of the World
- Offers creative, innovative approaches guided by film history, art history, and philosophy
- Includes a comprehensive filmography that also features a list of the director’s acting appearances and opera productions
- Explores the director’s engagement with music and the arts, his self-stylization as a global filmmaker, his Bavarian origins, and even his love-hate relationship with the actor Klaus Kinski
About the Author
Brad Prager is Associate Professor of German and an active member of the Program in Film Studies at the University of Missouri. He has authored two monographs: Aesthetic Vision and German Romanticism: Writing Images (2007) and The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth (2007). His articles have appeared in New German Critique, Studies in Documentary Film, Art History, and in the Modern Language Review. Most recently he has co-edited the collections The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and its Politics at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (2010) and Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents, Aesthetics, Memory (2008).
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgments xiv
Werner Herzog’s Companions: The Consolation of Images 1
Brad Prager
Part I Critical Approaches and Contexts 33
1 Herzog and Auteurism: Performing Authenticity 35
Brigitte Peucker
2 Physicality, Difference, and the Challenge of Representation: Werner Herzog in the Light of the New Waves 58
Lúcia Nagib
3 The Pedestrian Ecstasies of Werner Herzog: On Experience, Intelligence, and the Essayistic 80
Timothy Corrigan
Part II Herzog and the Inter-arts 99
4 Werner Herzog’s View of Delft: Or, Nosferatu and the Still Life 101
Kenneth S. Calhoon
5 Moving Stills: Herzog and Photography 127
Stefanie Harris
6 Archetypes of Emotion: Werner Herzog and Opera 149
Lutz Koepnick
7 Coming to Our Senses: The Viewer and Herzog’s Sonic Worlds 168
Roger Hillman
8 Death for Five Voices : Gesualdo’s “Poetic Truth” 187
Holly Rogers
9 Demythologization and Convergence: Herzog’s Late Genre Pictures and the Rogue Cop Film in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call—New Orleans 208
Jaimey Fisher
Part III Herzog’s German Encounters 231
10 “I don’t like the Germans”: Even Herzog Started in Bavaria 233
Chris Wahl
11 Herzog’s Heart of Glass and the Sublime of Raw Materials 256
Noah Heringman
12 The Ironic Ecstasy of Werner Herzog: Embodied Vision in The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner 281
Roger F. Cook
13 Tantrum Love: The Fiendship of Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog 301
Lance Duerfahrd
Part IV Herzog’s Far-Flung Cinema Africa, Australia, the Americas, and Beyond 327
14 Werner Herzog’s African Sublime 329
Erica Carter
15 Didgeridoo, or the Search for the Origin of the Self: Werner Herzog’s Where the Green Ants Dream and Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines 356
Manuel Köppen
16 A March into Nothingness: The Changing Course of Herzog’s Indian Images 371
Will Lehman
17 The Case of Herzog: Re-Opened 393
Eric Ames
18 The Veil Between: Werner Herzog’s American TV Documentaries 416
John E. Davidson
19 Herzog’s Chickenshit 445
Rembert Hüser
20 Encountering Werner Herzog at the End of the World 466
Reinhild Steingröver
Part V Toward the Limits of Experience Philosophical Approaches 485
21 Perceiving the Other in the Land of Silence and Darkness 487
Randall Halle
22 Werner Herzog’s Romantic Spaces 510
Laurie Johnson
23 The Melancholy Observer: Landscape, Neo-Romanticism, and the Politics of Documentary Filmmaking 528
Matthew Gandy
24 Portrait of the Chimpanzee as a Metaphysician: Parody and Dehumanization in Echoes from a Somber Empire 547
Guido Vitiello
25 Herzog and Human Destiny: The Philosophical Purposiveness of the Filmmaker 566
Alan Singer
Filmography 587
Compiled by Chris Wahl
Index 611