Heart of Glass (1974)

Synopsis: In director Werner Herzog's most conceptual and perhaps most challenging film, HEART OF GLASS, a small Bavarian town is plunged into a mysterious and haunted despair when the owner of the town's... In director Werner Herzog's most conceptual and perhaps most challenging film, HEART OF GLASS, a small Bavarian town is plunged into a mysterious and haunted despair when the owner of the town's preindustrial glass factory dies, failing to pass on the secret formula for its special ruby-colored glass. The aesthetic and narrative paths merge as the film leads viewers deep into the hypnotic and at times gothic plight of the workers and townspeople who stumble through the town, mesmerized and dazed, verging on murder and madness. Herzog sets the tone not only with the highly stylized performances of his actors, who were actually hypnotized, but also by his signature attention to landscape and ethereal environments, creating a mystical plane of unreality. Vistas of fog-ensconced gothic landscapes merge hypnotically with magical interior scenes of premodern glassblowing as Herzog's evocatively absurd melodrama plays out its somnambulant trajectory toward a slow and submerged climax in which art and life collide in a symbolic and allegorical spectacle. [More]

Starring: Josef Bierbichler, Stefan Guttler, Clemens Scheitz

Starring: Josef Bierbichler, Stefan Guttler, Clemens Scheitz

Director: Werner Herzog

Director: Werner Herzog
Screenwriter: Werner Herzog

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