Werner Herzog is a singular presence among film directors, an artist who has made it his life’s quest to explore the peculiar to the point of exposing the familiar, and in turn, the familiar to the point of exposing the alien—the alien within our world, and within ourselves. Though a documentarian and a storyteller known for adapt- ing true stories, he sees in the commonplace ele- ments of the fantastic, the extraordinary, the operatic. This would seem to be an expression of his true nature rather than an affectation; his inter- views are rife with anecdotes that present him as someone, since his somewhat isolated childhood, both sensitive and susceptible to a fabulous view- point. He might seem, at first glance, to be a nar- cissist or calculating self-mythologist, but prolonged attention reveals that any calculation involved was done quite early, out of a determination to escape the mundane, though there remains in his work a great love for the commonplace and common folk. He talks about himself, about his world and work and his relation to them, with an awareness of the mythic dimension underpinning his own matrix; an awareness that has given him a sense of direction in his life and work that has been cultivated rather than calculated.
In an interview with Laurens Straub, Herzog re- members feeling drawn at one time to make his own versions of two of the great German cultural texts, Nosferatu and Woyzeck, not because they were more commercial projects than his usual fare but because they gave him a sense of foundation that he sensed he needed. After completing those two films, the opportunity came to make FITZCARRALDO, a film so daunting that he could not have dared to undertake it previously; however, without knowing for what mission he had been pre- paring himself, those earlier two pictures had forged a filmmaker capable of taking that step. This ex- ample is but one illustration of why, while watching Herzog’s films is a rewarding adventure in its own right, it is a doubly rewarding undertaking if we bring him along as our guide, something that these two ambitious box sets of his work make possible. Shout! Factory’s HERZOG: THE COLLECTION is a splendidly organized 12-disc set, while the BFI’s more compact THE WERNER HERZOG COLLEC- TION consists of eight discs. While the two sets
Portrait of writer-director Werner Herzog.
contain a good deal of shared material, there is enough material unique to each set to make it diffi- cult for any collector hoping to consider them in “either/or” terms. Unique to the Shout! Factory set are the features EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL, BATTLE OF THE LITTLE SOLDIER, WHERE THE GREEN ANTS DREAM, LESSONS OF DARK- NESS, LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY and MY BEST FIEND, as well the television documentaries PORTRAIT: WERNER HERZOG and HERZOG IN AF- RICA and a choice of audio commentaries in many instances. Exclusive to the BFI package are eight Herzog short films (a considerable bonus, as these have an average length of 45m per), an English alternative version of NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE, the Les Blank documentaries BURDEN OF DREAMS and WERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE, a 1982 SOUTH BANK SHOW on Herzog and an 83m Herzog interview from 1988, conducted by critic and playwright Neil Norman.
The two sets are also packaged quite differently. HERZOG: THE COLLECTION is packaged in al- bum-format with the individual discs tucked into cardboard sleeve pages, along with a 46-page book- let with annotations on each film written by Stephen J. Smith, Brad Prager and Chris Wahl. THE WERNER HERZOG COLLECTION is presented in more conventional Blu-ray packaging with a 34- page booklet with detailed credits information on each title and a new essay, “The Conquest of Dreams” by Laurie Johnson. Unfortunately, the booklet contains no information about the contents of specific discs in the set.
The contents of both releases were scanned at 2K from the original 35mm camera negatives (a 35mm interpositive in the case of MY BEST FIEND) or the best available 16mm elements under the su- pervision of Lucki Stipetic of Werner Herzog Film GmbH at Alpha Omeda Digital GmbH in Germany.
HERZOG: THE COLLECTION Shout! Factory, approx. 1500m, $159.99, BD-A (12 discs)
THE WERNER HERZOG COLLECTION
1967-87, BFI, approx. 1391m, £57.50, BD-B (8 discs)
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