Heart of Glass

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Film Description

A strange and beautiful film from a visionary director. A village glass factory loses the means of making its ruby glass after the master dies and takes the secret with him. Utterly stylized in action and speech the performances are literally other-worldly - the cast being put under hypnosis to perform their roles. Mesmerising.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Herzog commentary; trailer; production notes; Herzog biography; gallery.

Technical Details

Film Media

1 Trailer

View - Medium (3.00 MB)

Reviews & Articles

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Review by Graeme Hobbs on 6th January 2003

An extraordinary film from a visionary director, a romantic in no wistful sense but rather as one who explores the limits of expression and who dares to fail in the quest to bring his vision to life.

The story, pitched somewhere between fable and realism, is of a village glass factory in Bavaria that has lost the means of making its ruby glass after the master glassmaker has died and taken the secret with him. The local cowherd Hias, who is based on an eighteenth-century Bavarian peasant with prophetic powers, is called in to try and help find out the ingredients.

Utterly stylized in action and speech, the performances are literally other-worldly, the cast of the villagers being put under hypnosis to perform their parts, many of which were improvised after suggestions by Herzog. Characters are their actions. It is also the performances of the actors that set the pace of the film, allowing an atmosphere of dread and wonder to develop. This atmosphere is also created by the lighting throughout - aided natural light and candlelit interiors, and by the foreboding use of colour in costumes and sets.

The shots of landscape, which Herzog filmed from Bavaria to Alaska in his search for 'archetypal' landscapes are haunting and mesmeric. The music too, whether late-medieval or composed for the film by Popol Vuh also helps to draw the viewer in to this world that is grounded in a pre-industrial society, but takes place in the minds of those who live there.

The ending of the film could come from no other director and embodies that unique mix of vision, hope, suffering and futility that underscores much of Herzog's work.

A strange and beautiful film.

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Review by Wolfram Parge on 28th April 2003

Is there a time when the prophecy of eternity will come true? Heart Of Glass is a visionary tale based on a Bavarian rural labourer, who was gifted with visions of the future. But he is haunted by what he forsees for the small town in which he lives, an abandoned community whose sole means of survival is the making of a rare ruby glass. When the owner of the factory dies, taking the formula for the ruby glass with him, the town's only industry falls into decline and then bankruptcy. Unable to survive without this work, madness and hysteria grip the villagers, signalling the breakdown and eventual end of a way of life. Werner Herzog's film Heart Of Glass is a heartbreaking vision of the apocalypse, and of rebirth, showing us some of the greatest images in film history, ending with a small band of men giving up their existence in search of the meaning of life.

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Article - "The Adequate Images of Werner Herzog" by Graeme Hobbs
Tuesday 3rd February 2004

“We live in a society that has no adequate images any more, and if we do not find adequate images and an adequate language for our civilization with which to express them, we will die out like the dinosaurs.” Werner Herzog

Lessons of Darkness b...  View article in full

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