The German director’s career is being honored at the Lido, during the Festival running from August 27 to September 6.
He never made beautiful shots. Or at least, that’s what he always said. He has always tried to film the impossible — and succeeded in creating alien imagery by capturing reality itself. A good soldier of cinema: that’s Werner Herzog, one of the most important filmmakers in the history of cinema. He directed masterpieces such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo, and many more. A man of cinema, devoted to the seventh art. A free thinker, a director without limits or borders.
Born in Munich in 1942, Herzog saw his first film at the age of eleven. He made his first short, Herakles, at twenty. That was in 1962 — the beginning of a long and extraordinary career. Herzog has always been a free spirit, refusing to bend to the restrictions imposed by studios and producers. He wanted to make his kind of cinema, to tell his poetic vision — and he did. Among his most audacious and significant works is Fitzcarraldo (1982), shot in Peru in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. It tells the story of a man who dreams of building an opera house in the middle of the jungle. Thus began one of the most astonishing and dangerous productions in cinema history. There were injuries, deaths, production delays — and a “wonderfully” unhinged Klaus Kinski. You can’t talk about Herzog without mentioning his longtime on-screen alter ego, Kinski, one of the greatest and most volatile character actors of the 20th century. Brilliant and utterly mad. The two often came to blows, threatening to kill each other. Their relationship is best captured during the production of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, when Kinski threatened to walk off the film. Herzog didn’t try to convince him to stay — he simply said he had a rifle with nine bullets: eight for Kinski, and one for himself. Kinski stayed. That moment marked the beginning of a turbulent but fruitful collaboration spanning five films and ending only with Kinski’s death — and the documentary Herzog later directed, My Best Fiend.
Now, Werner Herzog is being awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival — a long-overdue recognition for a physical filmmaker who has roamed the planet in search of unseen images, challenging how we perceive the world, and daring us to go beyond the surface of reality.
