Herzog: The Enigma of Jaspar Hauser - KarazwLaimoon

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Herzog: The Enigma of Jaspar Hauser

Cinema Talks > 2016 Spring (Season 9)

Music Club: 2 March (7:00 - 9:00 All are welcome)

Moderator: Karim Koleilat


Title: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Director: Werner Herzog (Germany)
Date: 1974
Language: English (French Subtitles)
Duration: 1 hr 50 min
Key Actors: Bruno Schleinstein, Walter Ladengast, Brigitte Mira

Link to IMDB: Click Here
YouTube Trailer: Click Here
Roger Ebert: Click Here
The Guardian: Click Here
British Film Institute: Click Here

Synopsis: (from Wikipedia)

 
The film follows Kaspar Hauser who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man, wearing a black overcoat and top hat, who feeds him. One day, in 1828, the same man takes Hauser out of his cell, teaches him a few phrases, and how to walk, before leaving him in the town of Nuremberg. Hauser becomes the subject of much curiosity, and is exhibited in a circus before being rescued by Professor Georg Friedrich Daumer, who patiently attempts to transform him.
 
Hauser soon learns to read and write, and develops unorthodox approaches to logic and religion; but music is what pleases him most. He attracts the attention of academics, clergy and nobility, but is then physically attacked by the same unknown man who brought him to Nuremberg. The attack leaves him unconscious with a bleeding head. He recovers, but is again mysteriously attacked; this time, stabbed in the chest.
 
 
Hauser rests in bed describing visions he has had of nomadic Berbers in the Sahara Desert, and then dies. An autopsy reveals an enlarged liver and cerebellum.



Werner Herzog (5 September 1942), is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, an actor and an 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 heroes 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." In the past 10 years or so, Herzog has also produced some wonderful documentaries: Caves of Forgotten Dreams, Encounters at the End of the World and My Best Friend. The latter describes the turbulent relationship he's had with Klaus Kinski, a difficult actor to deal with. Along with Aquire, Kinski worked with Herzog on 4 others of Herzog's major films: Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre the Wrath of Gods, Nesferatu the Vampyre, Cobra Verde and Woyzeck.

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