Lessons of Darkness
I didn't know who Werner Herzog was a year ago until I joined Fandor, and now I actively seek out his movies and documentaries. I am consistently impressed. I am...
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog made his first film in 1961 at the age of nineteen and has since become one of the greatest figures of New German Cinema. Since his feature debut he has produced, written and directed more than fifty feature-length narrative and documentary films (along with numerous short films) which have screened for audiences worldwide.
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Filmography
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Happy People
With HAPPY PEOPLE: A YEAR IN THE TAIGA, Werner Herzog takes viewers on yet another unforgettable journey into remote and extreme natural landscapes. The acclaimed filmmaker presents this visually stunning documentary about the people living in the heart of the Siberian Taiga. Deep in the...Watch Movie
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My Best Fiend
Director Werner Herzog and late actor Klaus Kinski made five films together over a fifteen-year period, including such mutual career highlights as FITZCARRALDO, NOSFERATU and AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD. As much as this collaboration benefitted them both, the partnership was fraught with off-screen...Watch Movie
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Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Dieter Dengler knew he needed to fly from the moment when, as a little boy in war-torn Germany, he witnessed a fighter jet nearly clip his apartment building like some "almighty being." Within twenty years he was flying missions in Vietnam for the United States military. He...Watch Movie
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Lessons of Darkness
Werner Herzog travelled to Kuwait with producer/cameraman Paul Berriff to shoot the oil fires left blazing by the retreating Iraqi soldiers after the Gulf War. Faced with flames spewing from the earth, a landscape blackened by fire and oil and plumes of dark smoke choking the...Watch Movie
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Cobra Verde
Werner Herzog’s final collaboration with Klaus Kinski was, like FITZCARRALDO and AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD before it, a fact-inspired saga of exotic physical adventure whose production was nearly as arduous as the events depicted. Based on Bruce Chatwin’s novel "The Viceroy of Ouidah" (which was,...Watch Movie
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Ballad of the Little Soldier
Never one to shy away from criticism, Werner Herzog followed the controversy over his treatment of the Aguaruna Indians during the FITZCARRALDO production by journeying into the jungles of Nicaragua and Honduras to document the Miskito Indians’ armed struggle against the...Watch Movie
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Where the Green Ants Dream
Werner Herzog's films have taken him from the jungles of Peru to the peaks of Himalayas to the sole human outpost in Antarctica in a quest to find landscapes to inspire him and the dreamers who embrace those lands. WHERE THE GREEN ANTS DREAM is the Australian outback,...Watch Movie
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Fitzcarraldo
Werner Herzog's most epically-scaled film was inspired by an actual historical incident of stranger-than-fiction curiosity. In the late 1800s Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald had an entire steamship laboriously transported over a mountain in order to open a trade passage from rubber-rich...Watch Movie
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Nosferatu the Vampyre
Werner Herzog's English version of F.W. Murnau's original film pays homage to many of the latter's memorable images with stunning recreations while creating a number of his own dreamy moments: the twilight hike of Bruno Ganz's Jonathan Harker through the fog-ringed Carpathian...Watch Movie
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Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
Werner Herzog's German version of his eerie color remake of F.W. Murnau's original vampire classic is at once faithful to Murnau's film and quintessentially Herzogian, right down to the casting of Herzog's demon alter ego Klaus Kinski in the role he was born to play. Kinski is...Watch Movie
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Woyzeck
Werner Herzog had long been fascinated by Georg Büchner’s 19th-century play (and 1920s opera by Alban Berg) about a soldier pushed to the point of madness and he finally got his chance to film it mere days after wrapping NOSFERATU. With his crew intact and star Klaus Kinski in the lead, everyone...Watch Movie
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Stroszek
After casting Bruno S., the wide-eyed, child-like steelworker and street musician, in THE ENIGMA OF KASPER HAUSER, Werner Herzog wrote STROSZEK specifically for the odd, idiosyncratic non-actor. The biographical details of his starving street musician and social misfit released from prison into...Watch Movie
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Heart of Glass
After the international successes of AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD and EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL (aka THE ENIGMA OF KASPER HAUSER), Werner Herzog baffled many admirers with this cryptic parable. An 18th century Bavarian mountain village is famous for its production of "ruby glass"...Watch Movie
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Every Man for Himself and God Against All
Werner Herzog retells the true story of Kaspar Hauser, a young man who, without explanation or the ability to speak coherently, appears in the middle of Nuremberg in 1828. After learning to write and talk, Kaspar's strange musings and wild claims describing his life before...Watch Movie
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Aguirre, the Wrath of God
The first collaboration between director Werner Herzog and star Klaus Kinski, this freely-imagined yet fact-inspired tale of Spanish conquistadors searching for a mythical "city of gold" in 16th-century Peru was a career landmark for both Herzog and Kinski and an artistic...Watch Movie
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Fata Morgana
Possibly Werner Herzog's most experimental work, FATA MORGANA defies categorization. Is it a narrative feature? A documentary? A metaphysical essay on film? As the director himself has noted, it regards Earth and its creatures as if from the curious, alienated viewpoint of interplanetary...Watch Movie
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Land of Silence and Darkness
Werner Herzog has become as famous for his distinctive non-fiction films as for his dramatic portraits of obsessives, outcasts and madmen. It all began with LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS, a poetic study of Fini Straubinger, a fifty-six year old woman who went deaf and blind as...Watch Movie
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Even Dwarfs Started Small
One of the most bizarre films ever made (and certainly the most bizarre made by Werner Herzog), EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL is an allegory in which the diminutive cast portrays the residents of an apparent asylum who rebel against authority and stage their own revolution. Full...Watch Movie
Genres
- Action/Adventure / Wilderness
- Adaptation / Cinematic
- Adaptation / Literary / Prose
- Adaptation / Theatrical / Stage
- Avant-garde
- Avant-garde / Surrealistic
- Comedy / Black Comedy
- Cult / Exploitation
- Cult / Hyperreality / Quasi-Documentary
- Documentary / Art / Visual Arts / Motion Pictures
- Documentary / Biography
- Documentary / Disaster / Man-made
- Documentary / History
- Documentary / Political
- Documentary / Process / Personal
- Documentary / Social Issues
- Documentary / War
- Drama / Biopic
- Drama / Dramedy
- Drama / Expedition
- Drama / Melodrama
- Drama / Realism / Docudrama
- Drama / Realism / Social Realism
- Drama / Religious
- Drama / Romantic Drama
- Drama / Tragedy
- Fantasy / Allegory
- Horror / Creature Feature / Vampire
- International / African
- International / African / Cameroonian
- International / African / Ghanaian
- International / Americas / Central American / Nicaraguan
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / South American / Brazilian
- International / Americas / South American / Colombian
- International / Americas / South American / Peruvian
- International / Eurasian / Russian
- International / European / Czech
- International / European / German
- International / European / Spanish
- International / Middle Eastern / Kuwaiti
- International / Oceania / Australian
- Science Fiction / Utopia/Dystopia
- War / Vietnam War
Recent Reviews
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
This is not one of Herzog's best efforts, but it has its moments. Pointlessly slow and empty of background extras toward the beginning (and meaningful supporting cast throughout), it had...
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
Fantastically entertaining performance from Kinski. Drags at points, but you'd be silly for not watching it.
Heart of Glass
I know this isn't possible on Fandor, but I recommend watching this film for a second time with Herzog's commentary. It becomes a fascinating documentary in that light.
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
I prefer the 1922 version. It just wasn't my cup of tea.