Ten essential Werner Herzog films | Little White Lies

Top Ranking

Ten essen­tial Wern­er Her­zog films

06 Jan 2024

Words by David Jenkins

Two men with moustaches holding a banner that reads "Knowledge is Power" against a pink and purple sunset sky.
Two men with moustaches holding a banner that reads "Knowledge is Power" against a pink and purple sunset sky.
In cel­e­bra­tion of a BFI sea­son of the Ger­man maverick’s sub­lime work in film, we pick ten of our absolute faves.

For many younger cinephiles, the films of Wern­er Her­zog pro­vide an ethe­re­al gate­way drug to the world of hard­core Euro­pean art cin­e­ma. I say this not to den­i­grate the qual­i­ty or intel­lec­tu­al depth of the work, but as a fond per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tion of see­ing Aguirre, Wrath of God way too young and feel­ing wor­ried for the actors on screen in a way that was both excit­ing, ter­ri­fy­ing and above all, excit­ing. The images in this film didn’t look like the images in oth­er films.

Her­zog is some­one whose estimable screen cat­a­logue pro­vides both extreme diver­si­ty and sat­is­fy­ing uni­ty at the same time – that is to say, for Her­zog, no sub­ject mat­ter, genre or style is off the table, as long as it sub­tly ascribes to his unique view of the world and human­i­ty. The film­mak­er has spo­ken at length about the mean­ing and ratio­nale for his work, and on occa­sion has stat­ed that he is not a film­mak­er, but a writer, and that the images are processed entire­ly from his thoughts and ideas.

Per­son­al­ly speak­ing, the plea­sure that I have accrued from his films relates to his abil­i­ty to locate poet­ic order amid the chaos and mys­tery of the world, its land­scapes and its peo­ple. He is some­one who proves that you can be a human­ist while also believ­ing that life is lit­tle more than a mean­ing­less night­mare of suf­fer­ing. And so, ahead of a BFI ret­ro­spec­tive of his work, here are my top ten Her­zog essentials.

Three people at a table, an older woman in a blue dress holding a plate of food, a man in a black jumper, and a woman in a black outfit.

10. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (2009)

At the 2009 Venice Film Fes­ti­val, the major­i­ty of Her­zog-based ener­gy was trained at the world pre­mière of his nov­el, Nic Cage-star­ring crooked cop thriller, Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Yet, anoth­er, supe­ri­or Her­zog joint rolled out in a sur­prise slot, and it’s a film which def­i­nite­ly gives an affir­ma­tive answer to the ques­tion: is Michael Shan­non the new Klaus Kin­s­ki? The film is Herzog’s take on the true crime” sub-genre, but of course bites its thumb at con­ven­tion, with Shan­non play­ing a fraz­zled actor who becomes so fix­at­ed on his role that he attempts to mur­der his moth­er with a sabre. Con­tains an amaz­ing scene of Shan­non and Brad Dou­rif tool­ing around at an ostrich farm.

Four soldiers in military fatigues in a jungle setting.

9. Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) / Res­cue Dawn (2007)

While he’s not one for sequels, Her­zog is known for revis­it­ing and recal­i­brat­ing his past works, and the sto­ry of Ger­man avi­a­tor Dieter Den­gler pro­vides the mate­r­i­al for mul­ti­ple films and books. Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly is a doc­u­men­tary about Dengler’s unlike­ly escape from a Laot­ian POW camp dur­ing the Viet­nam war, with Den­gler him­self on hand to talk through the details. Res­cue Dawn, mean­while, offers a straight fic­tion­al retelling with Chris­t­ian Bale in the lead. It sounds like a stan­dard tri­umph-over-adver­si­ty news­pa­per cut­ting, but Her­zog focus­es instead on the human body’s capac­i­ty for suf­fer­ing and the human spirit’s capac­i­ty believ­ing in impos­si­ble things that may just save our lives.

Silhouetted figure stands before ancient cave wall paintings depicting horses and other wildlife.

8. Cave of For­got­ten Dreams (2010)

It wasn’t going to be long before Her­zog dipped his toe into the translu­cent pool of 3D tech­nol­o­gy, and he came up trumps with 2010’s Cave of For­got­ten Dreams. He heads on an expe­di­tion under­ground to the Chau­vet Cave in South­ern France to train his cam­era (and spe­cial lens­es) on the prim­i­tive paint­ings that were cre­at­ed many tens of thou­sands of years ago. The tran­scen­dent spec­ta­cle of see­ing the paint­ings and the hid­den nat­ur­al enclo­sure would like­ly be enough for some view­ers, but as with all of Herzog’s doc­u­men­tary work, it’s his spry, inquir­ing nar­ra­tion that tips this over the top.

A man in black clothing and sunglasses sitting in a field, with a brown bear in the background.

7. Griz­zly Man (2005)

Where Her­zog famous­ly espous­es a view of the world as being dom­i­nat­ed by chaos and con­fu­sion, the sub­ject of 2005’s Griz­zly Man, ama­teur envi­ron­men­tal­ist Tim­o­thy Tread­well, lived by a very dif­fer­ent set of beliefs that ulti­mate­ly led to him being killed by a hun­gry bear in the wilds of Alas­ka. The film is almost like Her­zog say­ing to the view­er, See? See what hap­pens when you embrace the idea of har­mo­ny and grace? You will die hor­ri­bly.” It also con­tains one of the great­est, Mon­do-esque scenes in the director’s canon, where Her­zog is filmed lis­ten­ing to an audio record­ing of Treadwell’s death and advis­es the own­er of the tape to nev­er lis­ten to it and to destroy it (advice he lat­er reneged on say­ing it was the prod­uct of his own shock).

An elderly man in a white suit seated on a haystack, with a steamboat visible in the background.

6. Fitz­car­ral­do (1982)

With­out mean­ing to sound face­tious, 1982’s Fitz­car­ral­do exem­pli­fies the can-do spir­it of the Her­zog project. The art of film­mak­ing is one that is bound to prac­ti­cal logis­tics and the under­stand­ing of tech­ni­cal process­es, and the famous sequence of Klaus Kin­s­ki organ­is­ing the trans­port of a steam­boat over a hill deep in the Ama­zon Rain­for­est is one of the great metaphors for the toils of mak­ing movies. The film offers jaw-drop­ping spec­ta­cle by the buck­et­load, and you know you’re see­ing images that were cre­at­ed with­out any con­ven­tion­al safe­ty nets. Yet as the years have passed, there’s a faint whiff of colo­nial cel­e­bra­tion to the sto­ry of a man attempt­ing to intro­duce opera to depths of rur­al Brazil.

Massive smoke plumes, flames, and explosions in an industrial landscape.

5. Fata Mor­gana (1971) / Lessons of Dark­ness (1992)

Yes, we’re cheat­ing a lit­tle by dou­bling up this pair of ambi­ent” doc­u­men­taries, but there’s so much visu­al and the­mat­ic con­nec­tiv­i­ty between the two that we thought we’d do a dou­ble-bub­ble. In fact, doc­u­men­tary” doesn’t feel like the right term for Fata Mor­gana and Lessons of Dark­ness, which offer stark images of land­scapes from around the globe and use cam­era posi­tion, edit­ing and music to sub­vert and, in many cas­es, height­en the mean­ing. The slowed-down sequences of bil­low­ing flame clouds in a post-Gulf War Kuwait give the sense of a fan­tas­ti­cal apoc­a­lypse in motion.

A person wearing a green jacket and red hat stands with a flag in an outdoor area with a wooden building and other structures.

4. Stroszek (1977)

A per­son­al, slight­ly left-field favourite among Herzog’s ear­ly mis­sives, 1977’s Stroszek is a com­ic tirade against Amer­i­can cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism and is famous for being the film that Joy Division’s Ian Cur­tis was watch­ing before he took his own life. The film marks the sec­ond and final col­lab­o­ra­tion with the mys­te­ri­ous actor and musi­cian Bruno S. who exudes such unortho­dox screen pres­ence that you don’t need to wor­ry too much about fol­low­ing the may­hem of the plot about a Ger­man alco­holic seek­ing (and very much not find­ing) his for­tune on the bar­ren flats of Wis­con­sin, USA.

A bald, pale man with a serious expression looks directly at the camera against a dark, blurred backdrop with yellow lights.

3. Nos­fer­atu (1979)

We have to remem­ber when we watch Robert Eggers’ forth­com­ing remake of Nos­fer­atu that Wern­er Her­zog already made an excel­lent one back in 1979. If there’s one thing that Her­zog is very much not known for it’s sex and eroti­cism, so this one is very much an out­lier on those terms, as it’s a film which is lift­ed no end by the chem­istry between Klaus Kinski’s Count Drac­u­la and Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Hark­er. It’s a film that’s rich with visu­al metaphor, and uses its cen­tral tale to speak of a world that’s crum­bling from with­in. It’s also not a hor­ror film, but rather a lilt­ing study of a man dri­ven by impuls­es he has no way to suppress.

Man in colourful hooded jacket and scarf, standing in a wooded area.

2. Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)

If we’re for­mu­lat­ing lists of films that we’d like to see pro­ject­ed on an IMAX screen, then Herzog’s sem­i­nal, shock­ing 1972 his­tor­i­cal epic of colo­nial adven­ture in the Ama­zon would be very near the top of the pile. From its open­ing shot of con­quis­ta­dores fil­ing care­ful­ly along a pre­car­i­ous moun­tain ridge, set to the ambi­ent strains of Ger­man prog band Popol Vuh, to its ago­nis­ing finale with star Klaus Kin­s­ki set adrift on a raft with only mon­keys for pas­sen­gers, it’s still an awe-strik­ing work of imag­i­na­tion and inge­nu­ity that looks and feels like noth­ing else before or since. Its stri­dent and artic­u­late polit­i­cal cri­tique of impe­ri­al­ist plun­der still rings as loud­ly as it ever has.

A person lying on the grass in a forest clearing, with trees and bushes in the background.

1. The Enig­ma of Kas­par Hauser (1974)

One thing to say about Wern­er Her­zog is that he’s made an extra­or­di­nary amount of films, and he has tend­ed to make at least one or two great ones for the last five decades and count­ing. Our top four here draw very much from a vin­tage run in the 1970s, and this is per­haps a reflec­tion of the free­dom he was giv­en to tell such tales at a time when fund­ing was nei­ther so restric­tive nor so hard to come by. 1974’s The Enig­ma of Kas­par Hauser is one of his most mov­ing, philo­soph­i­cal­ly rich and least didac­tic works, as it tells of a nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry foundling (played by Bruno S.) who spent the first 17 years of his life chained up in a dark cel­lar with only a toy horse for com­pa­ny. The film charts his sub­se­quent accep­tance into and rejec­tion from bour­geois soci­ety, and where Her­zog has often focused on the chaos inher­ent in nature, this is a film about soci­ety as a phan­tom of struc­ture and log­ic. In the end, chaos is every­where, cer­tain­ty is a myth, and the world – for bet­ter and for worse – will remain a loca­tion of infi­nite mys­tery when your time on it fin­ish­es up. Watch­ing it again now for its 50th anniver­sary year, you get a sense that it’s one that has influ­enced many mod­ern film­mak­ers, from Gre­ta Ger­wig (Bar­bie) to Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos (Poor Things).

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.