Heart of Glass

Werner Herzog is the idosyncratic and eccentric director of New German Cinema from the 1960s and I 970s. A wandering herdsman with magical powers gives the secret of making a unique and precious Ruby glass to a small town factory owner When he dies without relinquishing the formula for the remarkable glass the factory collapses into bankruptcy, and with it the town that was dependent upon it.

An undeniably typically Herzogian film, Heart of Glass is fitfully both agonisingly abstruse and intensely intimate. Herzog plays with the apocalyptic significance of his setting, with the obvious fabulous qualities of the story, and by placing the tale at the end of a pastoral Arcadian age, as the tiny town is on the brink of tremendous upheaval in the period of transition that is approaching, the Industrial Revolution. The performances derive power from their subdued angst, and the ubiquitous Nature tropes and gothic settings lend this film its own allegorical charm. Because of it bizarre stylisation Heart of Glass is undoubtedly mystifying and demanding, but nonetheless hauntingly visionary.

Review by Mark Radice
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95