La Soufrière – Waiting for an Inevitable Disaster (Werner Herzog, 1977)
Introduction:
           Born on September 5, 1942 in Munich, Germany, Werner Herzog began using cameras at the age of 19. (Bachmann, 2) He never had any formal training and his mother attests that he never had to study because “he just knew everything.” (Bachmann, 3) Herzog quickly decided that submitting scripts to producers wasn’t necessary and began working in a factory so he could finance his first shorts. He began making films in the early sixties, a time of rebellion for young filmmakers in Germany. His infatuation with the physical world, eschatology, and the transformation of the image through music has been apparent since his early films. La Soufrière– Warten auf eine unausweichliche Katastrophe (translates to “La Soufrière – Waiting for an Inevitable Disaster”) is a 1977 film directed by Herzog that embodies the condition of “the inevitable catastrophe that doesn’t happen” along with these quintessential “Herzogian” themes.Â
Content and Form:
           The film is 31 minutes long and was shot on 35mm color film using cameras that were, for the most part, hand-held. Herzog narrates and is seen with his crew in the film, adding an authoritative voice and self-reflexivity to the film. The film is also accompanied by classical compositions written by composers such as Wagner and Rachmaninoff. The film focuses on an active volcano located on the French island of Basse-Terre, in Guadeloupe. Herzog and his cinematographers, Edward Lachman and Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein, walk through the deserted streets and evacuated towns surrounding the volcano. They even hike right up to the edge of the smoldering caldera before turning back due to the threat of poison gas. In the deserted towns, streetlights continue to operate, televisions are left on, and starving animals claim it as their own. The images presented are surreal in their nature. What was once a bustling town of 75,000 is now ghost town inhabited only by animals and three “peasants” who refuse to be evacuated. Aerial shots of the town and volcano are present as well as interviews with the three “peasants”. We are also given still shots of photos of a town on a neighboring island, which suffered a volcanic catastrophe in 1902 that killed 30,000 and left only one survivor, a prisoner in solitary confinement. Themes of life, death, and reaction in the face of an apocalypse abound throughout the film .In terms of form; the film consists of montages of tight handheld close-ups of the deserted town, panning and aerial landscape shots, and talking-head interviews with the three “peasants” who remained. The shots are medium to long in their duration, allowing the “surface reality” to reflect a “deeper reality.”(Davidson, 14) In the end, the volcano never erupts, and the inevitable apocalypse the film builds doesn’t occur. The film ends with a large amount of irony and a little self-deprecating humor by Herzog.Â
Context:
           The summer of 1976 was full of natural disasters, “including earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Italy, China, and the Philippines.”(Casper, 31) Herzog had just completed filming Heart of Glass, “his strange, controversial, apocalyptic meditation that portrays a village’s loss of the “ruby glass” secret as a mythical catastrophe already prefiguring the apocalypse predicted by the seer Hias.”(Casper, 31) Needless to say, he had apocalypse on the brain, and when he heard about an impending volcanic eruption in Guadeloupe, which was suppose to erupt at any moment and rival the power of five atomic bombs, he hopped on a plane with his cameramen the same afternoon. After filming, the volcano never erupted, so they flew back to Munich and the evacuated townspeople slowly returned back to their homes. Herzog had this to say about his time with the volcano, “We treated it with great disrespect, Jorg and I walked all the way up to the crater and pissed in it. The matter of fear doesn’t come up. Nobody else could have made this film, and somebody had to. I suppose you will realize from this that in some way I must have resolved the death question.”(Bachmann, 4) Â
Scene Analysis: (16:04-20:04)
http://youtu.be/lyxMTC8BVo0?t=6m4s
(Begins at 6:04)
       The scene begins with a montage of sweeping aerial shots of the volcano shrouded in smoke and clouds. We hear Herzog say, “The hours past and the waiting began. The silence grew ever deeper and the volcano La Soufriere shrouded itself in clouds. Nobody knew if the eruption would happen in the next few minutes or the next day, and because one could not see a thing, the fear became anonymous.” As the narration stops, the music grows louder. Aerial shots of the volcano’s dense jungles, steep ridges, deep ravines, and cascading waterfalls are half shrouded by a thick white cloud. The accompanied music is haunting and transforms the landscape into a gothic cathedral. This relationship between image and music are a key feature in most of Herzog’s films. David Davidson points out in his article, “To effect seamless transition from one image to another and to heighten the emotional appeal of depicted sights, Herzog employs classical compositions by Albinoni and others, just as he utilizes the delicate music of Popul Vuh in Steiner and La Soufriire.”(Davidson, 15) The looming cloud, as alluded to in Herzog’s narration, gives off an impression of an impending doom and one can’t help but feel sublime. We no longer see the volcano as a sum of its physical properties but as metaphor for something deeper and more existential. Davidson writes that by the end of Herzog’s films, the locals are “seen no longer as distinct physical entities, but as goads to, and symbols of, human yearnings and dreams.”(Davidson, 15)Â
Next, we are presented with a hand-held shot of one the “peasants” who refused to evacuate. The camera approaches as the man and his cat wake from their slumber. The shaky footage from the hand-held produces a “gritty realism” which is seen throughout the film. The camera zooms in and composes an image of the man’s head with the cat that sleeps beside it. Kent Casper is astute to point out that this composition is “a familiar emblem of still life/vanitas tableaux.”(Casper, 33) For the man, it’s business as usual. He is the picture of peace. He’s not startled or surprised and he’s indifferent to the supposed impending catastrophe. When asked why he didn’t and still doesn’t leave, the man says he doesn’t fear death and has nowhere to go. He goes on to say that “Death, like life, is forever.” This essentially apocalyptic idealism is, as Casper points out, a “Herzogian phrase, one that collapses binarisms and succinctly captures the essence of the Herzogian narrative paradox.”(Casper,34) It embodies the larger contradiction and condition of the film, which is the “inevitable catastrophe that did not happen.”(Casper, 29) Â
Conclusion:
           La Soufrière was first released at the New York Film Festival on October 1st, 1977. It was the Special Mention in the Cracow Film Festival in 1978 and won the Film Award in Silver for Best Short Film at the German Film Awards in 1978. The film has been described as a “visionary meditation on the ecstasy of isolation and the energy of nature.”(Casper, 36) The name of the film, La Soufrière – Waiting for an Inevitable Disaster, embodies the narrative structure and condition of many Herzog films. His infatuation with the “inevitable catastrophe that doesn’t happen” really shines through in the film and in the name. It also references the ideas and thoughts of death and the apocalypse that are brought up by the “peasants” and are alluded to by the structure, content, and form. Controversy does surround the lines spoken by some of the “peasants”. Herzog has been known to feed people lines to create a certain mood or meaning in his films. There are many who believe this is the case with La Soufrière. The visual perspective of an alien observer, which can be found in La Soufrière, can be found again in Herzog’s 1992 film Lessons of Darkness.   Â
Bibliography/Works Cited:
Bachmann, Gideon. "The Man on the Volcano: A Portrait of Werner Herzog." Film Quarterly 31.1 (1977): 2-10. Web.
 Casper, Kent. "Herzog's Apocalypse as Eternal Return: The Circularity of La Soufriere." Perspectives on German Cinema (1996): n. pag. Web.
 "The Celluloid Highway." : La Soufriere (1977). N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2013.
 Davidson, David. "Borne Out Of Darkness: The Documentaries of Werner Herzog." Film Criticism (n.d.): n. pag. Print.