Steiner becomes more than just an athlete; he becomes a transcendent figure, and a “mere” sports film becomes a mystical experience.
Some documentaries set out make the unfamiliar familiar; others to defamiliarize the familiar. In his documentaries, Werner Herzog transforms both the familiar and the unfamiliar into the sublime.
In the 1970s, Herzog gained fame as one of the leading lights of New German Cinema. He was best known for his work with Klaus Kinski in "Aguirre: the Wrath of God" (1973) or with the elusive Bruno S. in "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" (1974). Critics and cinephiles were only peripherally aware, if at all, of the fact that Herzog was also a documentarian despite the fact that he shot more documentaries than fiction films during the 70s.
It´s not hard to understand why. Aside from the feature-length "Land of Silence and Darkness" (1969) and "Fata Morgana" (1970), Herzog´s documentaries were all short film (usually 45 minutes) funded by German television. Needless to say, short documentaries aren´t an easy sell in the marketplace, and only a handful of festival goers in America ever had the opportunity to see them on the big screen. The problem grew even worse in the 80s and 90s when Herzog worked almost exclusively in the short documentary form. Critics wondered if Herzog was still making films when, in fact, he was as prolific as ever.
Short documentaries still don´t get theatrical releases, but DVDs have rushed to the rescue. The success of the DVD format has enabled studios to release many types of films which would never receive traditional distribution: animation, TV shows, avant-garde films and, yes, even short documentaries. DVDs fill a gaping void left by Hollywood´s domination of theatrical distribution channels.
The three films included in "Short Films by Werner Herzog" were all made in the mid-1970s, arguably Herzog´s peak period. The films demonstrate different facets of one of the most unusual and innovative careers in the annals of documentary filmmaking.
THE GREAT ECSTASY OF THE SCULPTOR STEINER (1974)
Some pundits mistakenly believe that the goal of a documentary is to reproduce reality. Herzog, like the best non-fiction filmmakers, understands that a documentary should transform reality in order to present it in a manner the viewer never previously considered. Herzog does not merely report on the events he depicts, he interprets them and presents them in a manner that only he can.
At first blush, "The Great Ecstasy of Sculptor Steiner" appears to be a simple sports film. Walter Steiner is a wood carver by trade, but moonlights as the world´s greatest ski-flier. Apparently, ski-flying differs from ski-jumping by the sheer distance the skiers travel, and nobody can fly further than Walter Steiner. Steiner is so good that the best ski-fliers in the world don´t bother to show up to competitions when they know he will be there. He is so good, in fact, that he has to start his jumps lower on the ramp than everybody else out of the very real fear that he will fly clear over the course and beyond any reasonable safety zone. On one jump, he flies so far that he is unable to land cleanly and winds up with a badly bloodied face that almost knocks him out of the competition in Planica, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia).
Herzog appears on screen holding a microphone and breathlessly recounts Steiner´s exploits. He battles sports reporters from across the globe (including ABC) to get the champion´s attention. But Herzog has something more in mind than a mere sports film. Using high-speed cameras that can slow down the footage to 1/20th normal speed, Herzog enables us to see Steiner in a way nobody has ever seen him before. Seemingly suspended in time, Steiner flies ever so slowly through the air, his mouth open wide (in horror? in ecstasy?) as he leans his body forward so far he is practically parallel to the ground. With the snow and the blinding sun, the image becomes so distorted and blurred it is barely recognizable as anything more than shape, line and motion. I don´t think any filmmaker has ever used slow motion to such great effect. With the use of a moody electronic soundtrack by Popul Vuh (a frequent contributor to his films), Herzog manages to rip the image clear away from its mooring in reality. It is otherworldly. Steiner becomes more than just an athlete; he becomes a transcendent figure, and a "mere" sports film becomes a mystical experience.
The final image of the film is one of the most memorable I have ever seen. In super-slow motion (with Popul Vuh still cranking) Steiner sticks a textbook landing and then keeps skiing. Eventually he becomes nothing more than a black line that almost disappears into the blurred white snowy background. Herzog holds the image so long, it becomes unrecognizable. Steiner could be flying, he could be walking, or he could be sailing across the ocean.
"The Great Ecstasy of Sculptor Steiner" is an achingly beautiful film, and I consider it the greatest of all short documentaries, and one of the greatest short films of any kind.
HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK? (1976)
"Steiner" was a film about images; "Woodchuck" is a film about words.
Herzog and his crew head to Pennsylvania Dutch Country to film the 1976 World Livestock Auctioneer Championship. Herzog turns his attention on the Pennsylvania Dutch who are, of course, descended from German immigrants (Dutch should actually be Deutsch as in German). Despite their common heritage, Herzog is amazed to discover that he cannot understand a single word of their dialect; in just a few hundred years, their language, originally German, has mutated beyond recognition.
After his dalliance with the locals, Herzog focuses on the competition. The cattle auctioneers speak in a machine-gun quick patter that is not just a language, but also a kind of performance art. Herzog is known for his highly manipulated documentaries, but here he simply turns on the camera and lets it run as one auctioneer after another steps up the microphone. For more than twenty minutes, we see and hear nothing but a series of auctioneers snapping off bids and sell off the cattle who mill about the stockyard. The audio experience is so overwhelming that it soon begins to sound more like music than any kind of language. You could say that "Woodchuck" is one of the most eccentric concert films of all time.
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