Herzog, Werner, << HEHRT zahg or HEHRT zhahk, VEHR nuhr >> (1942-…), is a German motion-picture director, actor, screenwriter, and producer. Herzog won international fame for his surreal fantasies, such as Nosferatu the Vampire (1979), a reworking of a classic 1920’s horror film, and Fitzcarraldo (1982), the story of an Irishman obsessed with building an opera theater in the middle of the Amazonian jungle. Several of Herzog’s films deal with loneliness, madness, obsession, and alienation.
Herzog was born Werner Stipetic on Sept. 5, 1942, in Sachrang, Bavaria. He studied at Munich University, where he made his first short films in 1962. He then worked briefly in the United States for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). After making numerous short films and documentaries throughout the 1960’s, Herzog made his first feature film, Signs of Life (1968), about three bored German soldiers guarding a munitions dump on a Greek island. Aguirre, Wrath of God (1973) placed Herzog among the leaders of modern German filmmaking. Filmed on location, it told the story of an expedition to the jungles of Peru made in the 1500’s by Spanish adventurers seeking the legendary city of gold called Eldorado. It was followed by a string of other films that confirmed his leading status in the New German Cinema movement, notably the prize-winning Fitzcarraldo. His other films include Kaspar Hauser (1975), a true story of political intrigue in a German royal court in the early 1800’s, and Woyzeck (1978), adapted from an Expressionist play by the German dramatist Georg Buchner.
After 1982, Herzog returned to making documentaries. Many of these films were personal, sometimes spiritual, views of life. Herzog’s documentaries include Lessons of Darkness (1992), a film about the Kuwaiti oil fields, which had been set on fire by Iraqi troops at the end of the Gulf War; Bells from the Deep: Faith and Superstition in Russia (1993), an exploration of religion and superstition; Grizzly Man (2005), a nature film about a man who lived in the wild among grizzly bears; Encounters at the End of the World (2007), about Antarctica; Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), about the ancient paintings in the Chauvet caves of southern France; Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (co-directed by Dmitry Vasyukov, 2011), about the indigenous people living in Bakhtia, in the Siberian taiga; Into the Abyss (2011), conversations with a death-row inmate and those affected by his crime; Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016), Herzog’s exploration of the Internet and the electronically connected world; and Into the Inferno (2016), an exploration of active volcanoes around the world.
Herzog’s Rescue Dawn (2006) is a dramatization of his 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly. The film tells the real-life story of the German-born U.S. fighter pilot Dieter Dengler, who was shot down and captured in Laos during the Vietnam War (1957-1975). Herzog also directed the crime dramas Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (both 2009), and the biographical drama Queen of the Desert (2015). In 2012, he acted in the action film Jack Reacher.
Herzog wrote Of Walking in Ice (1981), a diary documenting his walk from Munich to Paris to visit an ill friend; and Conquest of the Useless (2009; originally published in German as Eroberung des Nutzlosen, 2004), a journal about the filming of Fitzcarraldo.
