Heart of Glass (film)
- 1 December 1976 (1976-12-01) (London Film Festival)
- 17 December 1976 (1976-12-17) (West Germany)
Heart of Glass (German: Herz aus Glas) is a 1976 German film directed and produced by Werner Herzog, set in 18th century Bavaria. The film was written by Herzog, based partly on a story by Herbert Achternbusch. The main character is Hias, based on the legendary Bavarian prophet Mühlhiasl.
Plot
The setting is an 18th-century Bavarian town with a glassblowing factory that produces a brilliant ruby glass. When the master glass blower dies, the secret of producing it is lost. The local Baron, who owns the factory, is obsessed with the ruby glass and believes it to have magical properties. With the loss of the secret, he descends into madness along with the rest of the townspeople. The main character is Hias, a seer from the hills, who predicts the destruction of the factory in a fire.
Production
During shooting, almost all of the actors performed while under hypnosis. Every actor in every scene was hypnotized, with the exception of the character Hias and the professional glassblowers who appear in the film. The hypnotized actors give very strange performances, which Herzog intended to suggest the trance-like state of the townspeople in the story. Herzog provided the actors with most of their dialogue, memorised during hypnosis. However, many of the hypnotised actors' gestures and movements occurred spontaneously during filming.[1]
The majority of the film was shot in Bavaria, just a few miles from where Herzog was raised in the remote village of Sachrang (nestled in the Chiemgau Alps), and also at a nearby village in Switzerland. Other brief shots of landscape scenes were filmed in various locations around the world that Herzog scouted out, including Yellowstone National Park and the Viamala canyon. The conclusion of the film was shot on the Skellig Islands.
Herzog, along with other members of the crew, has a cameo as one of the men carrying a load of ruby glass to the river.
Release
The film was screened at the London Film Festival on 1 and 2 December 1976.[2]
References
Bibliography
- "Heart of Glass" (Skellig Edition, 1976) by Alan Greenberg, including the screenplay by Herzog. English adaptation by Greenberg, with black and white photos also by him.
External links
- Heart of Glass at IMDb
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- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Signs of Life (1968)
- Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)
- Fata Morgana (1971)
- Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
- The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
- Heart of Glass (1976)
- Stroszek (1977)
- Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
- Woyzeck (1979)
- Fitzcarraldo (1982)
- Where the Green Ants Dream (1984)
- Cobra Verde (1987)
- Scream of Stone (1991)
- Lessons of Darkness (1992)
- Invincible (2001)
- The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)
- Rescue Dawn (2006)
- Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
- My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
- Queen of the Desert (2015)
- Salt and Fire (2016)
- Family Romance, LLC (2019)
- The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969)
- Handicapped Future (1971)
- Land of Silence and Darkness (1971)
- The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974)
- How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976)
- La Soufrière (1977)
- Huie's Sermon (1981)
- God's Angry Man (1981)
- Ballad of the Little Soldier (1984)
- The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1985)
- Herdsmen of the Sun (1989)
- Echoes from a Sombre Empire (1990)
- Jag Mandir (1991)
- Bells from the Deep (1993)
- The Transformation of the World into Music (1994)
- Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995)
- Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)
- My Best Fiend (1999)
- Wings of Hope (2000)
- Pilgrimage (2001)
- Ten Thousand Years Older (2002)
- Wheel of Time (2003)
- The White Diamond (2004)
- Grizzly Man (2005)
- Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
- Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010)
- Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
- Into the Abyss (2011)
- On Death Row (2012)
- Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016)
- Into the Inferno (2016)
- Meeting Gorbachev (2018)
- Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (2019)
- Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (2020)
- The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (2022)
- Herakles (1962)
- Game in the Sand (1964)
- The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1967)
- Last Words (1968)
- Precautions Against Fanatics (1969)
- No One Will Play with Me (1976)
- Portrait Werner Herzog (1986)
- Les Gaulois (1988)
- La bohème (2009)
- Incident at Loch Ness (2004)
- Of Walking in Ice (1978)
- Conquest of the Useless (2004)
- The Twilight World (2021)
- Every Man for Himself and God Against All (2022)
- Lena Herzog (wife)
- Lucki Stipetić (brother)
- Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980)
- Burden of Dreams (1982)
- Location Africa (1987)
- Plastic Bag (2009)