The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
(Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle)
Country: GER
Technical: col 110m
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Bruno S., Walter Ladengast, Brigitte Mira
Synopsis:
Nuremberg, 1928: a young man with a note round his neck, and barely able to walk or talk, is discovered. Apparently newly liberated from a lifelong prison of some kind, he is taken in by philanthropists who introduce him to society.
Review:
A double enigma, this, in a way, in as much as Herzog quixotically cast an actor/musician who himself had been mistreated as a child and held in a series of institutions. The film addresses the question of whether a man deprived of the stimuli for thought can be taught how to think and feel, or even whether he would be desirous of doing so. Perhaps inevitably, we are left sharing the reactions of Kaspar's helpers, rather than understanding the workings of his mind, but this is another one of its director's extraordinary 'coups de cinéma', over which he stands as naturalist and showman rolled into one.
(Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle)
Country: GER
Technical: col 110m
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Bruno S., Walter Ladengast, Brigitte Mira
Synopsis:
Nuremberg, 1928: a young man with a note round his neck, and barely able to walk or talk, is discovered. Apparently newly liberated from a lifelong prison of some kind, he is taken in by philanthropists who introduce him to society.
Review:
A double enigma, this, in a way, in as much as Herzog quixotically cast an actor/musician who himself had been mistreated as a child and held in a series of institutions. The film addresses the question of whether a man deprived of the stimuli for thought can be taught how to think and feel, or even whether he would be desirous of doing so. Perhaps inevitably, we are left sharing the reactions of Kaspar's helpers, rather than understanding the workings of his mind, but this is another one of its director's extraordinary 'coups de cinéma', over which he stands as naturalist and showman rolled into one.
(Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle)
Country: GER
Technical: col 110m
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Bruno S., Walter Ladengast, Brigitte Mira
Synopsis:
Nuremberg, 1928: a young man with a note round his neck, and barely able to walk or talk, is discovered. Apparently newly liberated from a lifelong prison of some kind, he is taken in by philanthropists who introduce him to society.
Review:
A double enigma, this, in a way, in as much as Herzog quixotically cast an actor/musician who himself had been mistreated as a child and held in a series of institutions. The film addresses the question of whether a man deprived of the stimuli for thought can be taught how to think and feel, or even whether he would be desirous of doing so. Perhaps inevitably, we are left sharing the reactions of Kaspar's helpers, rather than understanding the workings of his mind, but this is another one of its director's extraordinary 'coups de cinéma', over which he stands as naturalist and showman rolled into one.