A Companion to Werner Herzog showcases over two dozen original scholarly essays examining nearly five decades of filmmaking by one of the most acclaimed and innovative figures in world cinema.

First collection in twenty years dedicated to examining Herzogs expansive careerFeatures essays by international scholars and Herzog specialistsAddresses a broad spectrum of the directors films, from his earliest works such asSigns of Life andFata Morgana to such recent films asThe Bad Lieutenant andEncounters at the End of the WorldOffers creative, innovative approaches guided by film history, art history, and philosophyIncludes a comprehensive filmography that also features a list of the directors acting appearances and opera productionsExplores the directors engagement with music and the arts, his self-stylization as a global filmmaker, his Bavarian origins, and even his love-hate relationship with the actor Klaus Kinski

Brad Prager is Associate Professor of German and an active member of the Program in Film Studies at the University of Missouri. He has authored two monographs:Aesthetic Vision and German Romanticism: Writing Images (2007) andThe Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth (2007). His articles have appeared inNew German Critique, Studies in Documentary Film, Art History, and in theModern Language Review. Most recently he has co-edited the collectionsThe Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and its Politics at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (2010) and Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents, Aesthetics, Memory(2008).

Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgments xiv

Werner Herzogs Companions: The Consolation of Images 1
Brad Prager

Part I Critical Approaches and Contexts 33

1 Herzog and Auteurism: Performing Authenticity 35
Brigitte Peucker

2 Physicality, Difference, and the Challenge of Representation: Werner Herzog in the Light of the New Waves 58
Lúcia Nagib

3 The Pedestrian Ecstasies of Werner Herzog: On Experience, Intelligence, and the Essayistic 80
Timothy Corrigan

Part II Herzog and the Inter-arts 99

4 Werner Herzogs View of Delft: Or,Nosferatu and the Still Life 101
Kenneth S. Calhoon

5 Moving Stills: Herzog and Photography 127
Stefanie Harris

6 Archetypes of Emotion: Werner Herzog and Opera 149
Lutz Koepnick

7 Coming to Our Senses: The Viewer and Herzogs Sonic Worlds 168
Roger Hillman

8Death for Five Voices : Gesualdos Poetic Truth 187
Holly Rogers

9 Demythologization and Convergence: Herzogs Late Genre Pictures and the Rogue Cop Film inBad Lieutenant: Port of CallNew Orleans 208
Jaimey Fisher

Part III Herzogs German Encounters 231

10 I dont like the Germans: Even Herzog Started in Bavaria 233
Chris Wahl

11 HerzogsHeart of Glass and the Sublime of Raw Materials 256
Noah Heringman

12 The Ironic Ecstasy of Werner Herzog: Embodied Vision inThe Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner 281
Roger F. Cook

13 Tantrum Love: The Fiendship of Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog 301
Lance Duerfahrd

Part IV Herzogs Far-Flung Cinema Africa, Australia, the Americas, and Beyond 327

14 Werner Herzogs African Sublime 329
Erica Carter

15 Didgeridoo, or the Search for the Origin of the Self: Werner HerzogsWhere the Green Ants Dream and Bruce ChatwinsThe Songlines 356
Manuel Köppen

16 A March into Nothingness: The Changing Course of Herzogs Indian Images 371
Will Lehman

17 The Case of Herzog: Re-Opened 393
Eric Ames

18 The Veil Between: Werner Herzogs American TV Documentaries 416
John E. Davidson

19 Herzogs Chickenshit 445
Rembert Hüser

20 Encountering Werner Herzog at the End of the World 466
Reinhild Steingröver

Part V Toward the Limits of Experience Philosophical Approaches 485

21 Perceiving the Other in theLand of Silence and Darkness 487
Randall Halle

22 Werner Herzogs Romantic Spaces 510
Laurie Johnson

23 The Melancholy Observer: Landscape, Neo-Romanticism, and the Politics of Documentary Filmmaking 528
Matthew Gandy

24 Portrait of the Chimpanzee as a Metaphysician: Parody and Dehumanization inEchoes from a Somber Empire 547
Guido Vitiello

25 Herzog and Human Destiny: The Philosophical Purposiveness of the Filmmaker 566
Alan Singer

Filmography 587
Compiled by Chris Wahl

Index 611