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Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)

Clemens Scheitz and Bruno S. in Stroszek

Cast: Bruno S., Eva Mattes, Clemens Scheitz, Wilhelm von Homburg, Burkhard Driest, Clayton Szalpinski, Ely Rodriguez, Alfred Edel, Scott McKain, Ralph Wade, Vaclav Volta. Screenplay: Werner Herzog. Cinematography: Thomas Mauch. Film editing: Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus. Music: Chet Atkins, Sonny Terry.

Stroszek is Franz Kafka meets Mark Twain. Or maybe it's Alice in Wonderland if Alice had been a middle-aged ex-con with a history of institutionalization for mental illness. Or it's The Wizard of Oz with Stroszek/Dorothy accompanied by a sex worker and an elderly man instead of a scarecrow and a tin man. Or Stroszek is Don Quixote, or any other wandering naïf of myth and literature. Those analogues give the adventures of Bruno Stroszek the resonance they need to rise above the gritty absurdity of what happens in Werner Herzog’s film. In any case, it’s a film that’s more than what some would reduce it to: a satire on the American dream. To be sure, Stroszek (Bruno S.) and Eva (Eva Mattes) and Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz) set out for Wisconsin certain that America will offer something better than the bleakness of lower-class Berlin. Scheitz has a nephew there who owns a garage and can offer a job to Stroszek while Eva can leave her abusive pimps – who also torment Stroszek and Scheitz – and get a job as a waitress. And for a while all is well, except for the language barrier and Stroszek’s companions’ belief that they can get a mobile home and a color TV on credit without making payments. As a consequence, Scheitz goes to jail and Eva, resuming her old life, this time as a truck-stop hooker, goes to Vancouver. Stroszek ends up literally going in circles, the tow truck he has stolen madly chasing its tail in a parking lot until it explodes while Stroszek rides a ski lift around and around, up and down the hillside, and a dancing chicken in a “roadside attraction” continues its mindless scratching. Herzog’s real forte is documentary, and his precise and even witty choice of locations, plus his ability to employ real people instead of actors – and to make them remain real instead of just amateurs reading lines – gives Stroszek its grounding, even as the film’s narrative goes wildly loopy. It’s a film of richly strange and strangely rich details.

#Stroszek #Werner Herzog #1977 #Clemens Scheitz #Bruno S.

Clemens Scheitz as Scheitz and Bruno S as Stroszek (1977). Clemens was born in Munich and had seven acting credits from The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (1974, also with Herzog) to a 1981 German tv movie.

His other notable credits include Heart of Glass, and Nosferatu, both with Herzog.

#clemens scheitz #bruno s #stroszek

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Historians have speculated whether Kaspar Hauser was truly a feral child, a dispossessed member of the monarchy or a con artist. Werner Herzog’s absurdist biography THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER (1974, Tubi, Plex, YouTube) — sometimes shown under its German title, EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL — takes the first view, primarily to underline his thematic approach to the material. It’s a strange, sometimes hypnotic, sometimes maddening film with an amazing central performance by Bruno S., a self-taught street musician and artist taking his first stab at acting. His casting underlines the film’s absurdity. The real Hauser was 17 when he wandered into Nuremberg in 1828 claiming to have been chained in a remote room for his entire life. Bruno S. was 41 when he made the film, yet he captures the remote innocence Herzog wanted for the role. Hauser is an enigma to the staid citizens of Nuremberg, who can’t make sense of him or his story. As he learns language he’s taken under the wing of a professor (Walter Ladengast) who educates him as far as possible. His strange observations about life and inability to master social graces fascinate the people he meets, including an epicene British lord (Michael Kroecher) who may have a homoerotic interest in him (Kroecher has no problem with Hauser’s behavior until he catches him knitting, which is viewed as women’s work). But nobody credits his statements. When he demolishes a logic problem presented by a university scholar, the man says he got the exercise all wrong. When he has a vision of people of all sorts climbing a mountain with death at the top, the professor dismisses it as just a dream. With his frequent uses of static shots and incorporation of musical pieces by Mozart, Pachabel and others, Herzog creates a world too consumed by its most rigid structures to accommodate the presence of a true enigma. Lest this all sound too dry and academic, I’ll point out that the reactions to Hauser are often quite funny, with Herzog regular Clemens Scheitz utterly hilarious as the town scribe, constantly repeating what people say and asking if it should go in the town record.