Darling, Rialto Channel has gone and done something deliciously reckless.
They are giving us Werner Herzog in full flight – not a sampler plate but the entire delirium.
Nosferatu the Vampyre, Aguirre, Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, Heart of Glass, Stroszek, and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser — all newly remastered in 4K.
Six films, six obsessions, six fever dreams that tell you more about madness, power, and beauty than any polite cinema ever could.
And if you missed the theatrical release of Burden of Dreams, Les Blank’s documentary of the madness behind Fitzcarraldo.
If Herzog’s films are fever, Blank shows us the sweat. Men dragging a ship over a mountain, Kinski howling, Herzog nearly broken but never surrendering.
It is cinema watching itself bleed.
Herzog never made films about stories; he made films about states of being. He once said,
“I am fascinated by the idea of the edge of civilisation.”
That edge is where he pitched his tent, poured himself a stiff drink, and rolled camera.
“To make films you have to be a borderline criminal.” — Werner Herzog
Venice honours a mad visionary
At the Venice Film Festival, Herzog received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement, presented by Francis Ford Coppola.
Their friendship stretches back half a century, to when a penniless Herzog slept at Coppola’s San Francisco house while finishing the script for Fitzcarraldo.
Coppola declared:
“If Werner has limits, I don’t know what they are. Werner’s life and his very existence send a challenge to everyone out there: copy, if you can. And all of us truly wonder if anyone ever will.”
Herzog, moved to tears, answered with disarming precision:
“I have always tried to strive for something that goes deeper beyond what you normally see in movie theaters… to do something which was sublime or transcendental. I always wanted to be a good soldier of cinema.”
And then came the credo that only Herzog could deliver:
“To make films you have to be a borderline criminal. You have to know how to forge a shooting permit, how to pick locks. If you don’t have that in you, don’t even think about starting.”
The Films
Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)
The jungle devours men. Kinski again, this time as a conquistador adrift on the Amazon, declaring himself ruler of a kingdom of monkeys.
You can feel the mud in your veins, the sky pressing down. This is Herzog’s cathedral of madness, where ambition is indistinguishable from lunacy.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
A true parable: the wild boy who appears in Nuremberg, unable to speak, innocent as an alien. Bruno S., with his haunted gaze, gives one of cinema’s great performances.
Kaspar sees the world with aching clarity, and in that clarity is pain.
“Every man is an abyss, and you shudder when you look down.”
Heart of Glass (1976)
Herzog hypnotised his cast before filming, and the result is eerie: a village drifting through glassy despair, a prophecy of doom hovering over every line.
It is less a narrative than a trance, cinema as hypnosis, a spell you may not want broken.
Stroszek (1977)
Herzog’s most tragic clown: a Berlin misfit who follows the promise of America only to find frozen trailer parks, empty diners, and dancing chickens. It’s absurd, tender, and utterly cruel.
The American dream reduced to a mechanical bird pecking at a fake piano.
Fitzcarraldo (1982)
The legend. The mad opera-lover who drags a steamship over a mountain so Caruso’s voice might echo through the jungle. No tricks, no models Herzog made men haul the boat themselves. It’s art as folly, folly as art.
“A great metaphor for what we are doing dragging dreams over mountains.”
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
Herzog resurrects Murnau’s silent horror, but he isn’t paying tribute he’s performing a séance. Klaus Kinski is Count Dracula, not a lover but a plague: chalk-white, twitching, erotic and repulsive at once. The film shimmers between nightmare and romantic lament.
Closing
Herzog is cinema’s poet of obsession. His characters conquistadors, dreamers, drifters are not heroes or villains, they are holy fools stumbling toward transcendence.
To watch them in 4K is to see the sweat, the jungle, the madness in exquisite detail.
Rialto Channel is not simply screening films; they are staging a ritual.
DOC Play adds the backstage howl with Burden of Dreams.
And Venice has reminded us through Coppola’s praise and Herzog’s own fierce creed why he matters.
— Roger Wyllie, View Mag
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