Reviews

I saw FATA MORGANA at its US premiere in 1972 and again in 1975. The film remained in my (inexact) memory as possible model or prototype of the "surreal documentary", and I think I had recollections of Herzog's long pans and tracking shots in a back chamber of my mind while filming material in the Dolomites that I later combined with manipulated WWI footage in my own audio-visual work GEBIRGSKRIEGSPROJEKT. Having lived in Austria for 17 years and now being fluent in the language of FATA MORGANA's narration, I was eagerly looking forward to re-encountering the film on DVD.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I was rather disappointed. The terms of my reaction are largely defined by Werner Herzog's own commentary on the German DVD. That he wanted to make a documentary as if from the point of view of visitors from another galaxy is a good idea and a commendable ambition, but I think the hypothetical visitors from Andromeda would have arrived with a far more anthropologically organized structure of viewing than what Herzog here presents. It would however be unfair to call the film pretentious: it's just not that well thought out. There are indeed some strong images (not only those of the desert mirages ...) that could have been used effectively as expanding material in a more narratively oriented film, or served as basis for a more "experimental" work, such as those of Stan Brakhage (who Herzog professes to admire), but these images are too often weakened by sloppy camera movement or flaccid editing.

I found the use of heterogeneous music (Blind Faith, Leonard Cohen, the Kyrie from one of Mozart's masses) arbitrary and unconvincing. Chance-derived juxtapositions are stimulating now and then, but this is no well-thought-out dialectically surreal counterpoint of image and sound that could really cut into the eye and ear.

Some sequences in the later part of the film (a foreign aid worker having African children recite "der Blitzkrieg ist Wahnsinn", or a scene where German tourists hop up and down in little volcanic craters on Lanzarote) lapse into the ridiculous and unfortunately retrospectively lower the level of what came before.

BUT Werner Herzog is a great filmmaker who has in other works made immense contributions to his art. FATA MORGANA may be one of his weaker films, but I suspect it was essential to his development. I'ts a pleasure and a challenge to view and to think about this film.

HEROSTRATUS was, sadly, the only feature-length narrative project realized by the remarkable scientist, visual artist, and filmmaker Don Levy. Though little-known and seldom screened, its influence has been greater than one might think and may be visible in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, PERFORMANCE, and perhaps in the early films of Werner Herzog.

The film is remarkable not only for its very high visual quality (often on the level of the best of Antonioni and Tarkovsky) and for its sometimes innovative relations of sound and image, but also for the attitude and working method of the director: a highly personal and historically deeply rooted concept of surrealism, linked to the scientific method, that shapes the stream of consciousness woven into the narrative into something close to visual music.

I had the opportunity to see this film twice in the 1970's, and thirty years later, images are still vividly present. I'll mention just two: first, the black-clad woman (Ines Levy) lighted from behind, face painted white, carrying a black parasol, seen either slowly stalking out of an alley towards the viewer, or standing on a rooftop, viewed from below, recalling for me drawings by Hans Bellmer. Second, the lengthy hyper-violent sequence in which the protagonist demolishes his paraphernalia-packed apartment. A swaying suspended doll stands out within the jagged rhythms of the editing and will much later in the film be flashed into another key sequence: one example for the rich network of associations that go far beyond story-telling structures. On the soundtrack during the demolition: one of the virulent fugues from Beethoven's MISSA SOLEMNIS.

The film's female lead is named Clio, and CLIO is, in Greek mythology, the muse of history.

HEROSTRATUS does have some flaws, but is by any applicable standards a work of depth and integrity. Had it received more extensive distribution, it might have turned out to be a key film of the late 1960's. It's to be hoped that current plans for a commercial DVD release will soon bear fruit and that this film will receive the (belated) recognition that it richly deserves.

I loathe Ken Russell's films about the composers Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and Liszt, which seem to me flashy and simplistic. I saw THE DEVILS twice in US cinemas in the 1970's, and it must have left a better impression, since now having to give seminars about pictorial-narrative structures in music and their relation to film, I remembered the "diabolical" score by Peter Maxwell Davies, at that time on the cutting edge of the British avant-garde. Watching this film on the currently available DVD was a fascinating and thought-provoking experience that enormously increased my respect for Ken Russell. It might have provoked outrage at the time of its release through the flouting of religious and sexual taboos, but retains its strength through the portrayal of an individual standing up for freedom of love and thought, resisting the pressures of church and state,this conveyed in a bizarrely stylized manner that seems often closer to opera or music theater than to narrative historical film. Much of the film's special impact comes from Derek Jarman's set design, Shirley Russell's costumes, and of course from Peter Maxwell Davies' music, quite on the level of what he had written at that time, recalling orchestral works such as WORLDES BLIS or ST. THOMAS WAKE, and particularly MISSA SUPER L'HOMME ARMÉ for speaker (Vanessa Redgrave as costumed priestess) and ensemble. Ken Russell may have crapped on deceased composers, but he clearly treated his contemporary Maxwell Davies with respect. I was impressed by Oliver Reed's complex portrayal of Grandier and by Vanessa Redgrave's effective transmission of the psychically tortured Sister Jeanne. Apart from these actors much of the tone of the second half of the film is determined by Michael Gothard, who plays the inquisitor Father Barré. I still recall Gothard from his lead role as the doomed poet in Don Levy's HEROSTRATUS. I remember having seen on the big screen a cinemascope film with brilliant saturated colors. The currently available DVD is a sorry mutilation, with the sides of the cinemascope image cropped and with pale washy colors. Hopefully Warner Brothers will soon acknowledge what was once a "problem child" and provide an authentic DVD release. For me this is a film whose value has increased after three decades, polymorphous, polystylistic, thought-provoking. 9 out of 10, and my interest for Ken Russell's work has been whetted.