Clemens scheitz biography sample

By Roger Ebert / July 7, 2002

Who else but Werner Herzog would make a film about a retarded ex-prisoner, a little old man and a prostitute, who leave Germany to begin a new life in a house trailer in Wisconsin? Who else would shoot the film in the hometown of Ed Gein, the murderer who inspired "Psycho?" Who else would cast all the local roles with locals? Who else would end the movie with a policeman radioing, "We've got a truck on fire, can't find the switch to turn the ski lift off, and can't stop the dancing chicken. Send an electrician.”

"Stroszek" (1977) is one of the oddest films ever made. It is impossible for the audience to anticipate a single shot or development. We watch with a kind of fascination, because Herzog cuts loose from narrative and follows his characters through the relentless logic of their adventure. Then there is the haunting impact of the performance by Bruno S., who is at every moment playing himself.

The personal history of Bruno S. forms the psychic background for the film. Bruno was the son of a prostitute, beaten so badly he was deaf for a time. He was in a mental institution from the ages of 3 to 26--and yet was not, in Herzog's opinion, mentally ill; it was more that the blows and indifference of life had shaped him into a man of intense concentration, tunnel vision, and narrow social skills. He looks as if he has long been expecting the worst to happen.

Herzog, who with Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder brought forth the New German Cinema in the late 1960s and 1970s, saw Bruno in a documentary about street musicians. He cast him in the extraordinary film "Every Man for Himself and God Against All" (1974), also known as "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser." It told the story of an 18th century man locked in a cellar until he was an adult, and then set loose on the streets to make what sense he could of the world. Bruno was uncannily right for the role, and right, too, for &qu

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a story with a beginning and an end; or at least, being based on a historical case, it feels as if it ought to have a clear beginning and end. In reality, Kaspar Hauser is an unfinished story – indeed, a story about unfinished stories. It is, as the English title suggests, an unanswered question; the German title actually means ‘every man for himself and God against all’, but still the connotations of scattered disunity support the sense of enigma. No unifying answer can be achieved in a world where only God knows the answers and where humans can only cling to their own provisional, partial guesses. In a key scene, the mysterious foundling Kaspar (Bruno S.) is sitting with Käthe (Brigitte Mira), housekeeper to his tutor Professor Daumer (Walter Ladengast). He proposes to tell her a story about the desert, but admits he doesn’t know the ending.

Käthe reminds him that Daumer believes that stories should be told from start to finish, so Kaspar gives up the attempt. It is only on his deathbed, following his stabbing by an unknown assailant, that he tells the tale, illustrated by what looks like rough, flickering found footage. A caravan loses its way crossing the Sahara. Its leader, an old blind Berber, tastes the sand and tells his people that the mountains they see are imaginary. The caravan goes on, reaches the city – and then, says Kaspar, the story begins. But what happens next he does not know. Then he dies.

The town authorities try to provide a satisfactory ending to Kaspar’s own incomplete story. They perform an autopsy, discover irregularities in his liver and brain, and close the case. The town registrar (the diminutive, gnome-like Clemens Scheitz) struts off into the distance, eager to prepare his latest report (‘Protokol’). But in real history, the Kaspar Hauser story only begins here: already a cause célèbre of 1830s Europe, it developed into a fully

DVD Review Of Stroszek

Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 6/11/10

  There has never been a filmmaker remotely like Werner Herzog. This is not a qualitative judgment, just a reiteration of his filmography. He blends fiction and nonfiction in ways no filmmaker before nor since has, and almost always it works, and works exceedingly well. Who else could craft memorable films with the psychotic actor Klaus Kinski? Make a ‘science fiction’ documentary about the burning oil wells of Gulf War One? Craft an oddly moving, if undefinable film using a cast comprised solely of midgets and dwarves? Make Count Dracula seem pathetic? Make a man obsessed with moving a boat over a mountain into one of film’s great achievements? Or make a film about an idiot who is so dumb he gets eaten alive by the grizzly bears he seeks to ‘protect’ actually work? No one.

  But, if all that were not enough, consider his two films made with Bruno S., the mentally ill, vagabond street musician and part-time forklift driver who was abandoned to orphanages, insane asylums, and prisons most of his life. The first film Herzog cast him in was 1974’s The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, in which Herzog skillfully used Bruno’s real life dysfunctions to his advantage. The final film in which Bruno appeared was 1977’s Stroszek, after Herzog initially wanted to use Bruno in Woyzeck, the eventual 1979 film he later decided to cast Klaus Kinski in. Herzog decided to repay Bruno for disappointing him by writing the screenplay for Stroszek, reputedly in just four days, although given Herzog’s penchant for tall tale telling, this is to be taken with the proverbial salt grain.

  The film follows a mentally deficient character just released from prison, whose name is Bruno Stroszek; a surname Herzog first used in his brilliant 1968 debut film Signs Of Life. Herzog has claimed the reason he gave the two films’ lead characters the name Stroszek was because he was paying back a classmate in c

Stroszek (1977): A Nowhere Man in Wisconsin, or: the Perpetually Dancing Chicken

I celebrate Werner Herzog’s birthday with a (re)viewing of his equally absurd and insightful portrait of both Bruno S. and and society. Also, I’ve been told there’s a dancing chicken.