“Often he was a joy, and you know, he was one of the few people I ever learned anything from.”
Herzog on Herzog (2002), On Klaus Kinski
Werner Herzog is a German screenwriter, film director, author, actor, and opera director.
Herzog is considered one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Schröter, and Wim Wenders. Herzog's films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who are in conflict with nature.
French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog "the most important film director alive." American film critic Roger Ebert said that Herzog "has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular." He was named one of the 100 most influential people on the planet by Time magazine in 2009.
“Often he was a joy, and you know, he was one of the few people I ever learned anything from.”
Herzog on Herzog (2002), On Klaus Kinski
Burden of Dreams (1982)
Kontext: Taking a close look at what is around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth, and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it, I love it very much, but I love it against my better judgment.
Minnesota declaration (1999)
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Kontext: Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect.
Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Zdroj: Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Herzog on Herzog (2002), On Klaus Kinski
“I shouldn't make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum.”
Said while making Fitzcarraldo
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
“If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!”
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980)
Minnesota declaration (1999)
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980)