Scenarios II: Signs of Life / Even Dwarfs Started Small / Fata Morgana / Heart of Glass

196 Pages·2018·3.116 MB·English

by  Werner Herzog, Krishna Winston

Scenarios II
Also by Werner Herzog
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
Of Walking in Ice
Scenarios: Aguirre, the Wrath of God |
Every Man for Himself and God Against All |
Land of Silence and Darkness | Fitzcarraldo
Scenarios II
Signs of Life
Even Dwarfs Started Small
Fata Morgana
Heart of Glass
Werner Herzog
Translated by
Krishna Winston and Werner Herzog
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis | London
Signs of Life, Even Dwarfs Started Small, and Fata Morgana were originally
published in Germany as Drehbücher I by Skellig Edition; copyright 1979 by
Carl Hanser Verlag, München. Heart of Glass was originally published in English
translation by Skellig Edition; copyright 1976 by Carl Hanser Verlag, München.
Signs of Life and Even Dwarfs Started Small were translated from German by
Krishna Winston; English translation copyright 2018 by Krishna Winston.
Fata Morgana and Heart of Glass were translated by Werner Herzog. English
translation of Fata Morgana copyright 2018 by Werner Herzog.
First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2018
All photographs copyright Werner Herzog Film. Courtesy of Werner Herzog Film/
Deutsche Kinemathek.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401– 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Herzog, Werner, author. | Winston, Krishna, and Werner Herzog, translators.
Scenarios II : Signs of Life, Even Dwarfs Started Small, Fata Morgana, Heart of Glass /
Werner Herzog ; translated by Krishna Winston and Werner Herzog.
First University of Minnesota Press edition. | Minneapolis : University of Minnesota
Press, 2018. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018001925 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0441-8 (pb)
Classification: LCC PN1998.3.H477 A25 2018 (print) | DDC 791.43/75–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001925
Contents
Signs of Life
1
Even Dwarfs Started Small
69
Fata Morgana
131
Heart of Glass
139
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The screenplay for Signs of Life was written in 1964 and origi-
nally bore the title Signs of Fire. The film was not shot until 1967,
on the Greek islands of Kos and Crete, right after the military
takeover. Just as the title was altered, many changes occurred
while the film was being shot and edited, including some that took
the work in a very different direction. To give only one example,
the key image of the ten thousand windmills does not appear in
the original screenplay because at the time they played no part in
my conception of the film. In preparing the text for publication, I
decided not to add the dialogue list from the actual film for pur-
poses of comparison; this version was not intended to represent
a working script.
The idea for Even Dwarfs Started Small came to me in 1966,
but the screenplay was not written until the end of 1967. Then in
1968 and 1969, I first shot the major portions of Fata Morgana
in East Africa and the Sahara, and at the end of 1969 I filmed
the dwarf movie on the Canary Island of Lanzarote. But that
film was edited and completed first, followed by Fata Morgana.
I never wrote an actual screenplay for that film; it was to meant
to be a science fiction story. That explains why the version in this
volume consists only of the complete dialogue list. The Creation
section was taken, with slight modifications, from the Popol Vuh,
a sixteenth- century text from Guatemala. My friend Manfred
Eigendorf collaborated with me on the other two sections.
W. H.
Munich, 8 March 1977
Postscriptum
I always felt it odd that each shot is numbered in the screenplay
of Signs of Life, but at the time I wrote it I had never seen a
screenplay. Someone told me that a proper scenario had to in-
clude numbers, otherwise it would not be professional. There
is a certain innocence in my having followed this advice, and I
thought the scenario should stay as it has always been.
As to the central images of the ten thousand windmills: they
were dormant in me since I saw them as a fifteen- year- old ado-
lescent traveling on foot the length of the Greek island of Crete.
I remember clearly that I omitted the windmills in the written
text because I thought every viewer of the film would immediately
know that I had wildly constructed the geography— these images
could not have been shot on the small island of Kos, so their ori-
gin hence was misrepresented. Obviously, virtually no one among
all audiences I have had for the film would have known or cared
about it.
Regarding Even Dwarfs Started Small, the text does not have
the full ashen despair of the film itself, as it became more radical
during shooting. At that time, I was totally convinced I would not
live to be twenty- five, but after this hurdle was taken and I turned
twenty- six, I asked myself: if I had such an unexpected extension
of life, should I not be at least as bold as Goya when he was old,
sensing the grip of the Reaper? His darkest, his greatest, most
nightmarish visions were painted in the series of Black Paintings.
Goya gave me the courage to turn my film into a vortex of laughter
and despair.
As to Heart of Glass, I always sensed there was a somnambu-
listic quality to the behavior of the villagers in the story. They walk
into a prophesied, foreseen disaster like sleepwalkers. I thought
they should act in real trance. In fact, I cast the film carefully
with actors who would be willing to follow me in a completely
new terrain— to act under hypnosis. First tests confirmed that
people deep in the state of hypnosis could open their eyes without
“waking up” and that they could communicate with each other in
dialogue. I had to dismiss a professional New Age creep of a hyp-
notist who maintained there was a “cosmic aura” that he, by dint
of his special powers, could attract and radiate onto “subjects,”
thus hypnotizing them. After two sessions, I had to do it alone,
and during shooting I had to be the hypnotist. Further, since we
do not know much about perception and vision, out of curiosity
I conducted tests with audiences in a movie theater whom I put
under hypnosis. They saw films and had very strange experiences.
As there are certain psychological risks in this, I did not follow
up with my experiments.
For Fata Morgana, the texts emerged only during the phase
of editing— in a way, they imposed themselves onto the footage
of the film. While I was filming mirages in the Sahara Desert, I
had a vague feeling that what I saw felt like the Creation of the
World abandoned by its Creator. And it was almost natural that
the images also had a forlorn Paradise and an anguished Golden
Age embedded in them— waiting to be named, to be lifted, to be
redeemed.
Today, I still marvel at the film. I knew I was not making a
documentary (some critics who have lost all hope in cinema are
trying to label it as such). I remember that on the first day of edit-
ing, my editor, Beate Mainka- Jellinghaus, to whom I owe a lot,
said that with this kind of material we have to pretend to invent
cinema. I continue to try to do this today.
Los Angeles, 1 December 2017