Heart of Glass (1977)

Crappy film

A Brilliant Conflict

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

"Herz aus Glas" or "Heart of Glass" is an award-winning (German Film Award) 95-minute movie from 1976, which means it has its 40th anniversary this year. The writer and director is Werner Herzog and this is why this film is among the most known works from 1970's West Germany. The lead actor here is Josef Bierbichler (in his 20s) who is still acting successfully these days in German film and worked with Herzog on other occasions too ("Woyzeck"). And while I like Bierbichler and think he has great physical presence in his films (similarly to Mario Adorf), I must say that his film here did very little to me. This surprised me as I am usually a big Herzog fan. But to me, this felt more like a Schlöndorff movie perhaps. Yes, these almost 100 minutes are full of beautiful shots as always with Herzog and also some nice metaphors, but somehow I would have expected a Herzog film on ruby glass to be a lot more memorable. The action was very slow and I felt it was difficult to really get interested in the characters or the story in general. For me, this was definitely one of the worst Herzog films I have seen. I cannot recommend the watch here and I have zero interest to ever see it again. Thumbs down.

There is a scene near the beginning in which two men in peasant dress appropriate to a period around 1800 are sitting across a small table from each other in a silent ale house. One of the men looks a bit like Richard Boone; the other like a guy who runs a pawn shop. They stare at one another sullenly. Boone finally says, "I'll dance on your corpse." Time passes. Enough time for glaciers to advance and retreat. "No, you won't," says the pawn shop guy. Dynasties rise and fall. Boone picks up his beer glass and wordlessly smashes it over the other man's head. The Mesolithic Age comes and goes. The pawn shop guy, as if playing Laurel to Boone's Hardy, deliberately picks up his glass and empties it over Boone's head. The end. That's the whole scene.The story, to the extent that there is one, is about a one-factory village whose foreman has just died and been buried. He was the only man in town who knew the secret of making ruby red glass in the factory. The owner of the factory is despondent. Or maybe not. It's hard to tell because everybody seems beset with melancholy. At least those who can express any emotion at all. It's been claimed that the entire cast was under hypnosis during filming. I don't believe it, but I can believe Werner Herzog slipped some sort of synapse-fusing psychedelic substance into their beer steins and bratwurst because there seems to be an abundance of schizophrenic non sequiturs on display. At times it looks like the scenes in the "loony bin" in Val Lewton's "Bedlam." I understand some German but, aside from the factory owner, this was one weird dialect. I won't go on with this because there's either too little to go on or way too much.The production design is exquisite and so is the lighting and the photography, both indoors and outdoors. Everything looks slightly blue, icy, and damp under the remorseless clouds but it's all beautifully done. The compositions are flawless. Herzog has the eye of an old-fashioned painter, somebody on the order of Rembrandt.There is no musical score except source music played on period instruments -- something that resembles a harp and another that looks like a miniature concertina.There isn't much to say about the film except that it's just about the opposite of what you'd find in a ten-second television commercial. No noise, little action, lengthy static shots, and no attempt to sell any discernible message at all.In a way, the movie resembles Werner Herzog himself. If you haven't seen him interviewed, you really should. He's calm and self possessed. His accent is soothing, enthralling even. He doesn't laugh and doesn't show any expression of irritation. He's like a very very good shrink. Yet, what he says is sometimes insane. "Even the stars are crazy"?

Being a huge Herzog fan, normally loving all his films for the absurdity, I found this particular film being my least favorite. First of all, the plot is about the sacred ruby glass, in which the only person with the ability to make this infamous ruby glass dies without revealing the secret. You discover the plot within the first ten minutes, and it grows interest in you, but as the movie goes on, you drastically lose interest. As much potential as the plot had, it didn't really expand into all it was worth.To me, the plot didn't play an important role in the film. I was much more fascinated by the cast of the film, being hypnotized by Herzog (I'm still curious as to how Herzog hypnotized them.) It almost became hilarious during points of the movie. I found my mind sometimes wandering off the subtitles to focus on the minor characters in the background.Unlike other Herzog films, I didn't get much out of this one. Although it did have Herzog's favorite Man vs. Nature theme, I just couldn't take it for what it was. Of course, it did have some beautiful shots that could have been perfect if it wasn't for the horrible quality of the 16mm camera used. Not that I'm blaming Herzog for the lack of funds, just making a point.The whole atmosphere of the film was very "lynchian." The dialog, mostly. It was very obvious that David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Eraserhead) got a lot of inspiration from "Heart of Glass." In conclusion, I would ONLY recommend this movie to fans of Herzog (especially his older films: "Aquirre, the Wrath of God", "Even Dwarfs Started Small", etc) for the reason that they will understand it and get more out of it. However, to people who are unfamiliar with Herzog's older films, I would stay away from this one.

I like the director Werner Herzog and have watched several of his movies. But I must confess that I totally did not like "Herz aus Glas" (Heart of Glass). I do speak German, but I learned it in the North, so I totally did not understand the Bavarian dialect people were speaking. That was not only my problem, the person I was watching it with grew up in Bavaria and didn't understand the plot or some of the dialog either. I don't know why Herzog decided to make it so hard to understand, was it intentional? I did not like the editing, I thought it was confusing. The actors were incredibly ugly, which was interesting in a paradox way... Where did they find these people? They look like they walked out of a picture of a peasant tavern from 17th century Holland! Because the film was so confusing and so darn boring, I would not recommend it. Visually it was beautiful, but that is not enough to make it a good film.