HEART OF GLASS   1976. (Herz aus Glas) Directed by Werner Herzog. 94 minutes. In German with English subtitles

This is one of the most controversial films in the career of Werner Herzog. He takes a story about a small Bavarian village which has lost its "collective vision", and turns it into a wild experiment. Everyone that he cast in the film, except one person, was hypnotized before the camera started rolling. The result is bizarre, and cannot be measured by using the laws of Hollywood cinema.....here we venture off to some other world....right off the cinematic map. The actors seem detached and almost like sleepwalkers as the story unfolds and the town descends into madness. Much of the mysterious dialog of the film was emitted spontaneously by the actors while under hypnosis.

The cinematography of the film is mysterious, with images which haunt the viewer and taps directly into their subconscious. Yep, you got the idea....in some way the audience itself also falls under the magical spell of hypnosis. And those images will stick with you long after you leave the cinema- many people consider it one of the most beautiful films ever made. It is often like a moving painting by Casper David Frederich, sublime and thick with atmosphere. As one critic said, "There is no other film in Herzog's library the equal of Heart of Glass in terms of visual poetry." Like all of the films in this early period of Herzog, the hallucinogenic musical score is by the phenomenal Popol Vuh, which only adds to the dreamy otherworldliness. And of course, it has to be seen on the big screen! Maybe I should mention that the music group Blondie liked the film so much that they named their hit songs after it.

One viewer's reaction:
"There is only one word to describe this movie: Uncanny. The director has hypnotized the actors. They meander through the movie, lost and not quite at home, their blank stares leaving imprints on the consciousness of the viewer. The intense visual imagery, characteristic of all Herzog movies, is in this movie the most haunting and unnerving. For people who don't need something substantial to happen every 5 seconds in a film (and so those who don't suffer from television or Hollywood induced Attention Deficit Disorder) Heart of Glass no doubt will be a force of visual fury, done subtly but surely, evoking the uncanny upon each viewing."

This will be a glorious high-definition screening.

* There will also be a special zine made for this screening by the Vondelpark Oceanographic Society, that will be freely distributed to everyone.