Synopsis and Review of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982) (original) (raw)
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Du film au récit: constructions verbales et visuelles à travers le phénomène Fitzcarrald(o)
2018
Robert Baca-Oviedo a soutenu en juin un mémoire particulièrement original et convaincant autour du film Fitzcarraldo de Werner Herzog. Une des originalités résidait dans le type de contextualisation qu’il y opérait. Refusant de limiter la signification durable du film aux polémiques qui avaient entouré sa sortie (concernant notamment les rapports très tendus que Herzog aurait entretenus avec les figurants indiens – ce qui n’est pas invraisemblable dans le mesure où tout le tournage était une suite de crises, y compris avec son interprète principal, Klaus Kinsky), Baca montre comment Herzog s’était lancé dans un projet mégalomaniaque et fou : réincarner la conquête de l’inutile qui était devenu depuis longtemps un synonyme de l’entreprise de Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald qui s’était proposé de construire un opéra à Iquitos en pleine jungle pour y faire venir d’illustres chanteurs, actrices etc. Baca montre comment le film - notamment à cause de la séquence documentaire hallucinée dans laquelle le cinéaste filme son équipe de figurants indiens et d’acteurs en train de recréer dans les conditions réelles l’arasement de la colline séparant le bassin de l'Ucayali du bassin de Madre de Dios et le hissage du bateau en haut de la colline suivie de sa glissade le long de l’autre versant de la colline jusqu’au fleuve - a réussi à devenir lui-même un nouvel épisode du mythe fitzgeraldien (un musée est d’ailleurs consacré à Herzog et son film à Iquitos). Baca combine l’étude du tournage du film (basée entre autres sur des sources locales qu’il est le premier à étudier) avec une étude historique plus étendue situant à la fois l’entreprise du Fitzgerald historique et celle du « Fitzcarraldo » herzogien dans l’histoire de l’Amazonie. Il insère ainsi de manière élégante son analyse esthétique et herméneutique de l’entreprise fictionnelle de Herzog et l’élucidation de la figure historique de Fitzgerald (qui fut le roi du caoutchouc) dans le cadre plus vaste de l’histoire culturelle, économique et socio- politique de la région amazonienne. (Jean-Marie Schaeffer).
It is typical of New Waves and New Cinema movements to resort to physicality as a means to establish a material link between cast/crew, the profilmic event, and the resulting film, so as to generate a sense of belonging and identity. Firmly rooted in the New German Cinema and akin to all New Wave movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the oeuvre of Werner Herzog also relies, perhaps more intensely than that of any of his contemporaries, on a physical approach to filmmaking. However, physicality, in his case, seems to derive from an irretrievable loss of identity, a rupture between the human element and its environment through which the materiality of the former comes to the fore. Reality thus becomes synonymous with difference , a fact embodied by the legions of extraordinary beings who populate his entire output. In this chapter, I will investigate the nature and validity of Herzog ’ s claims to difference, its relation to physical filmmaking, and the kind of realism resulting from his mode of address within and beyond the realm of representation. Starting from the director ’ s body itself, I will proceed to the examination of physicality in his oeuvre in the light of hitherto little explored historical and aesthetic connections with New Wave and New Cinema movements, in particular the Nouvelle Vague and the Brazilian Cinema Novo.
The relationship between myth and catastrophe can help us understand Werner Herzog's filmography. Taking as a reference this relationship, and analyzing character and landscape narratives, I will compare Herzog's filmography with some contemporary Latin-American films to show that, even if these films resonate with the language of catastrophe of the German director, they objectivize catastrophe to the point of demystification.
(2018) Werner Herzog's contributions to human-animal studies.pdf
It was only in recent years that historians and cultural critics, and especially those of us who study human-animal relations throughout history, have begun to understand something Werner Herzog has been warning us about for the last half century: that “nature wants us dead.” In so saying he refers to the conflictive and asymmetrical nature of our relationship with nature, with the non-human world and in particular with animals. The aim of this paper is to propose a Herzogian reading of the animal world, one that reappraises the role of conflict in human-animal relations at the expense of the notion of consensus, or peaceful coexistence, so popular among researchers in this field. Fortunately, there are certain characters who, like Herzog, go against the grain.
Inner and deeper: Motifs of fiction in Werner Herzog's films
CINEJ Cinema Journal, 2019
The emphasis on the mix of facts and inventions has prevailed in the studies about Bavarian director Werner Herzog's treatment of fiction, leading to the same result again and again: for Herzog, poetic truth is more important than factual truth. But how can we go beyond this conclusion? This paper will try to open an alternative path of analysis more adequate to his philosophy of filmmaking, one that works through the detection of visual and narrative motifs in his films, thus searching the impact of Herzog's idea of fiction into his poetics.