Inspiration

From deep in the archives, today I wanted to share these photos with you, which were taken sometime in the early 1970's, of two filmmakers - Werner Herzog and Sam Fuller - who came to screen their work and speak at the Art Institute of Chicago. 

They each became major sources of inspiration, Pied Pipers for a group of us tender young noodles who followed them, wide-eyed and innocent, down the road to a life and career in cinema.

For anyone who has ever seen Werner Herzog speak, or watched his fevered, ecstatic body of work, especially from his "golden" period starting out with "The Land of Silence and Darkness" and "Fata Morgana" and including "The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser", "Aguirre, The Wrath of God", "Hearts of Glass", "Strocyzk" and the film that he had come to screen that day and which made such an indelible impression on us - "Even Dwarves Started Small" - you have some small idea what a fantastical realm we entered as we fell under the spell of this cinematic wizard and prankster.

Worlds apart from Herzog's German New Wave was an old school survivor of both World War 2 and what was known back then as Poverty Row, the independent B-movie studios that made them fast and cheap, Samuel Fuller, who learned how to pack a punch into every frame of his boiled down tabloid narratives in whatever genre he worked in.

Equally colorful and mesmerizing as a storyteller, at that time he may have been presenting his latest noir-ish opus "Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street" featuring a typically outrageous Fuller setpiece of a shoot out in a maternity ward! Working backwards into his canon we devoured fringe classics like "The Naked Kiss", "Shock Corridor", "Underworld USA", "Verboten", "House of Bamboo", "Forty Guns" and one of my all-time favorites "Pick-up On South Street" starring Richard Widmark and an incredibly touching performance by Thelma Ritter.

I felt lucky to have close encounters with both of these directors in my formative years. One was a European upstart searching for the poetic soul of his subjects who claims to have stolen his first 35mm camera, and is documented to have jumped into a cactus bush at the request of his cast of dwarf actors upon completion of principal photography of "Even Dwarves Started Small". The other was a cigar-chomping grizzled veteran whose manifesto was for a filmmaking style he called "Fist".

A great yin and yang to inspire an impressionable mind!

william

Comments

[Diane]

The scene with he old man loading up his cart with turkeys is a Herzog scene I will never forget. I can't remember which film it was. The one with the trailer! And the trailer being taken away. And the dreams of America. It rang so true. And the wonderful faces of Bruno Ganz and that little old man.
I saw it only once, when it first came out, and I can still remember the feeling of witnessing something so precious and true and profound. Very moving. It's bits and pieces have stayed with me, and the feeling of privilege to be sitting in that nearly empty theater in the company of this film. There is that saying floating around now which says something to the effect that people do not remember the facts, but how you made them feel. It is true for me, of this film, whose name and majority of scenes I cannot remember. The feeling of being completely filled and grounded and amazed by this film comes back to me now, the same as then. Maybe that's the best thing, after all.

[william]

My good friend Michael Weinstein reminded me that he took those photos of Herzog and Fuller back when he was at the University of Michigan and our mutual friend Lony Rhumann was running the Film Society there. Thanks Michael. Credit where credit is due! At least I got the year right. And I did see those two Film Gods speak at the Art Institute. Along with Michael Powell who came once for a screening of The Red Shoes!