The White Diamond

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: Werner Herzog / In category: 6 of 10 / Overall 70 of 100

‘The White Diamond’ opens with a potted history of aviation, before settling into the story of Graham Dorrington, an aeronautical designer who –

No, scratch that. Potted history of aviation, my ass! This is a Werner Herzog film. ‘The White Diamond’ opens with a skilful collage of archive footage depicting mankind’s earliest attempts to get off the ground, often ending in disaster, with Herzog calling time on his oblique history lesson at the point where “the real future of aviation was thought to be the airship. Like the roads now filled with automobiles, the skies would be full of airships.”

This opening section fades out with images of the Hindenburg descending in a coruscation of flames. And on this sobering note, the film settles into the story of Graham Dorrington, an aeronautical designer who pioneers a sort of mini-airship for use in scientific research above the jungle canopies of Guyana.

At first, Dorrington seems an atypical Herzog protagonist. There’s a boyish enthusiasm in his to-camera discussions of the work he’s involved in; he’s passionate but never obsessive. He comes across as too good-natured to embody the kind of crazed jungle-bound undertakings that Herzog portrays elsewhere in his filmography. Put it this way: if ‘The White Diamond’ were a feature and not a documentary, Dorrington would be played not by Klaus Kinski but Stephen Fry.

Gradually, though, Herzog works his way towards the tragic and defining event of Dorrington’s career; the event that still haunts him, that throws its shadow across a decade of his life and over the current project.

In 1993, testing a prototype of Dorrington’s mini-airship, the internationally renowned wildlife photographer Dieter Plage flew above the Sumatran rainforests. His camera became entangled in the canopy and, while trying to retrieve it, Plage fell from the airship. The fall killed him. When Dorrington eventually discusses the event, and the “heaviness” he feels over Plage’s loss, Herzog captures the moment sensitively; his camera is never a voyeur.

Plage’s death makes Dorrington trepidacious when it comes to the maiden voyage of his new airship, not least because he has two candidates eager to test it out and never mind the potential dangers. One – of course – is Herzog himself. The other is Marc Anthony Yhap, one of the indigenous populace who congregate to assist and/or observe. Herzog finds in Yhap the soul of a fellow poet. (The title comes from Yhap’s description of the airship.) The eminently laconic Yhap waxes lyrical about taking off in the airship, drifting slowly and peacefully all the way to Europe to be reunited with his family.

If the kinship between Herzog and Yhap is tangible, the slowly developing friendship between Dorrington and Yhap is poignant and forms the human centre of the film. The final scenes, bathed in the ecstatic truth that Herzog ceaselessly strives for, has Dorrington take Yhap up in the airship. The indigent’s delight is, if not an exorcism of sorts, then certainly a counterbalance to the weight Dorrington has been carrying around since Plage’s terrible accident.

Another moment of ecstatic truth – approaching, in this case perhaps, a spiritual truth – comes when Herzog’s cameras, lowered painstakingly, penetrate a hitherto inaccessible cave behind the Kaieteur Falls which provides roosting for innumerable white-tipped swifts. Call it legend, call it superstition, but the locals believe that said cave is holy, that whatever is discovered in there should never be made public. Herzog, respectful of their beliefs, opts to keep the footage under wraps.

“By dint of declaration the so-called Cinéma Vérité is devoid of vérité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants,” Herzog wrote in his gauntlet-throwing Minnesota Declaration. “Filmmakers of Cinéma Vérité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts. Tourism is sin and travel on foot a virtue.” He’s absolutely right. And here he proves that the absence of the image can be just as revealing and ecstatically true.

Wings of Hope

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: Werner Herzog / In category: 2 of 10 / Overall: 2 of 100


On Christmas Eve 1971, just hours after her graduation and attendance at the prom, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke boarded a LANSA flight to rejoin her father at the biological research post he operated in the jungles of Peru. Koepcke's mother was with her; one of the officially listed 95 victims when the plane (whose mechanics, it transpired, were only experienced in working on motorbikes and whose pilots' licences were not in order) crashed deep in the jungle.

LANSA already had a poor reputation. An earlier crash Cuzco had revealed that 106 people were on board, ten more than the maximum. Koepcke recounts that it was with some trepidation that she took the flight. Due to non-availability of aircraft, only one of two scheduled flights left that day. Herzog remembers that those who did get to fly out seemed relieved. Herzog, you see, was there. He was due to fly out to the jungle to shoot 'Aguirre Wrath of God'. Previous flights while location scouting had brought Herzog into contact with some of the crew members who died that day. Herzog caught a subsequent flight and filming commenced. It later transpired that he and Klaus Kinski were making their first collaboration just "a few rivers away from Juliane as she was fighting for her life".

'Wings of Hope', Herzog says, is a film that lay dormant within him for a long time because of this reason. Despite the coincidence, though, Juliane Koepcke's participation was not necessarily guaranteed. In the seventeen years that had elapsed since the crash, the eminently pragmatic Koepcke had sought anonymity in an attempt not just to live a normal life but to define that life by her work as a scientist and not her unwanted fame as the sole survivor of a disaster that claimed over a hundred lives. She had already evaded unwanted media attention and been the subject of a cheaply and quickly shot adventure film* by the time Herzog approached her.

In the book 'Herzog on Herzog' (ed. Paul Cronin), he describes the circuitous route by which he established contact: through newspaper reports that located her mother's burial in a small Bavarian town, Herzog tracked down the priest who had officiated; according to the cleric, an aunt of Koepcke's lived in a neighbouring village. Herzog approached her and, although she would not consent to any discussion with Herzog, she agreed to pass on his phone number. Herzog recalls:

Juliane called me ... I explained to her that it would be enough for me to talk with her for thirty minutes, not a minute longer, and that of course I would not record the conversation. I also explained that exactly five minutes into our meeting I would offer to withdraw if she wanted me to. So when we met I put my wristwatch on the table and exactly 300 seconds into the meeting I stood up, took my wristwatch, bowed to her and said, "This is the deal. I am withdrawing unless you would like to continue for the next twenty-five minutes." And she took my arm and said, "Sit down and stay we haven't finished yet." ('Herzog on Herzog', p.269)

Perhaps this provenance is in Koepcke's mind early in the documentary when she stands with Herzog in Peru's airport, the director describing his memories of the day he tried to get on Koepcke's flight but was turned away. The day his life was saved by blind chance. He asks Koepcke, "Are you ready to go back, do you dare?" She appraises Herzog evenly and replies that she has no choice - "I've come this far." Juliane Koepcke presents, in 'Wings of Hope', as calm, controlled and unshowy, slightly formal but with a warmth and a hint of humour in her eyes. Her descriptions of her ordeal are precise, vivid and completely devoid of hyperbole. She remains composed whilst describing the darkest of experiences - regaining consciousness to the realisation of her mother's death; the realisation that she was alone in the wilderness; the wound she sustained, festering with maggots - and Herzog respects her dignity, her resolve, her quiet but steely inner strength.

"Juliane is a scientist, very straight-talking and clear-headed, and the only reason she survived her ordeal was because of her ability to act methodically through those absolutely dire circumstances" ('Herzog on Herzog', p.270). And as low-key as her description of events is, there is no doubt hers is an incredible tale of survival. The crash occasioned the biggest search-and-rescue mission that had then been undertaken in Peru. It was called off after ten days. Juliane Koepcke emerged from the jungle two days later. Herzog's understanding of Koepcke's "clear-headed ... methodical" character was behind his decision not to incorporate too much stylisation into the documentary.

It's perhaps ironic, for all that Herzog has a profound personal connection to Koepcke's story, that 'Wings of Hope' is one of his most straightforward documentaries. Examples of his trademark "ecstatic truth" are limited to bookended scenes which speculate as to Koepcke's coping mechanism for the tragedy. These sequences utilize the imagery of dreams, but whereas Herzog has sparked deep psychological insights through similar moments in other documentaries, here they serve more to provide a touch of surrealistic poetry to the narrative framework. The overall effect is fitting. The documentarist is a poet and a man of instinct, his subject a pragmatist and a woman of science. The differences are palpable. It's a testament to the power of Koepcke's story, then, that the film never suffers.

* 'I miracoli accadono ancora' ('Miracles Still Happen', a.k.a. 'Amazon Death Trap'), starring Susan Penhaligon, described by Herzog as "a pretty bad movie".

PERSONAL FAVES: Little Dieter Needs to Fly

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: Werner Herzog / In category: 1 of 10 / Overall: 1 of 100



As a documentarist, Werner Herzog has produced a body of work as striking, challenging and original as any of his feature films. This is the man who used cinema (a visual and aural medium) to explore the world of a blind and deaf woman in 'Land of Silence and Darkness'; who, in 'Grizzly Man', crafted the found footage of an egomaniacal narcissist into something powerful, profound and unsentimental; who made the eccentric, quietly subversive 'Encounters at the End of the World' on the Discovery Channel's dime.

Approaching a Werner Herzog documentary, it's a good idea to put aside any preconceptions of what a documentary is ... or should be. "Cinema verite," Herzog famously declared, "is the truth of accountants." Simply recording events as they happen in front of the camera gives you about as much chance of getting at the truth of something as the doomed penguin in 'Encounters at the End of the World' has of flying to the moon. Although if that penguin did fly to the moon, you can bet Herzog would already be there, as philosophical and unruffled in a space suit as he is mired in the jungle or being shot at during an interview, ready to capture the moment.

Herzog's approach to the documentary form - indeed, to film in general - is to find what he calls "ecstatic truth". There's an example of this not five minutes into 'Little Dieter Needs to Fly', arguably one of Herzog's most compelling documentaries. His subject is German-born American fighter pilot Dieter Dengler. A boy in post-war Germany, haunted and inspired in equal measure by a memory from the war years of an American plane passing so close to his house that for a split second he locked eyes with the man in the cockpit, Dengler emigrated to the US, gained citizenship, joined the air force and was deployed to Vietnam. He had no concept of the geography or the politics of the conflict. He knew nothing - would only realise after harsh circumstances gave him a brutally different perspective - of the sufferings and hostility that were cloaked by the foliage of the jungle.


Dengler's participation in the war lasted for all of one mission. Shot down over Laos, he was captured by the VC. A forced march through the jungle brought him to a prison camp. He slept with his feet locked in place between blocks of wood, his hands shackled to those of the POWs to either side of him. Use of the latrine was a once-a-day luxury. Beaten, emaciated, stricken with dyssentry, men endured their own filth. Their captors evinced ferality but demonstrated an instinctive understanding of how to psychologically demoralise prisoners; break them down; rob them of hope. Dengler, a man for whom the wellspring of optimism evidently never even threatened to run dry, determined to escape. But I'm getting ahead of myself ...

Herzog begins the documentary with the Dieter Dengler of 1997, a Dieter Dengler in late middle age: expressive, affable, a genial host (he opens his doors to Herzog and his crew as if they were old friends) and an interviewer's dream in his candidness and eloquence. Herzog films him driving along an isolated stretch of road in a beautifully preserved 1960s roadster. Dengler pulls up outside of his house, hops out of the car and closes, opens and closes the driver's side door. He does the same thing with the front door to his house. "This may be strange to some people," he says, almost sheepishly, "but to me it's very important, this freedom to be able to open or close a door."

This is the moment of ecstatic truth. As Herzog freely admits in conversation with Paul Cronin, editor of the inspirational Faber film book 'Herzog on Herzog', this was "a scene I created from what he had casually mentioned to me, that after his experiences in the jungle he truly appreciated being able to open a door whenever he wanted to."

And this is where critics of Herzog (yes, such people exist; yes, they're irredeemably lacking in poetry, imagination and a soul) pounce, declaring, "Ah! So he staged that scene. He scripted and directed it. Therefore he is not a documentarist and 'Little Dieter Needs to Fly' is compromised and at least in part a work of fiction."

To such people, I would recommend (a) the immediate acquisition of a life; and (b) the relinquishing of cinema in favour of an interest more suited to their mindset. Trainspotting, maybe. Yes, the door-shutting bit in 'Little Dieter Needs to Fly' isn't a bona fide, documented, totally and utterly unscripted piece of footage. Yes, it was staged. But check out the next scene: Dengler shows Herzog and the camera crew around his house. Every available square inch of wall space is occupied by a painting or a framed photograph. The paintings have a common theme: each of them depict an open door. This bit isn't scripted or staged. See what Herzog's doing? That's right: he's getting to the truth of the matter.

Here's another way he gets at the truth of the matter. He takes Dengler back to Laos.

How many documentaries have you seen where the main participant appears purely as a talking head? Andrew McDonald's 'Touching the Void' springs to mind. The location footage and re-enactments are breathtaking, but ultimately the film is about mountaineer Joe Simpson and the hard decision he had to make regarding his climbing partner, yet we only ever see Simpson against a black background. The distance between Simpson, narrating his recollections in a studio, and the re-enactment cast and crew braving the elements and getting the shots that make the project viably cinematic is all too pronounced.

At the other end of the scale, how many documentaries have you seen where the subject revisits the scene of an emotional or traumatic event, where the camera keeps rolling as said poor unfortunate, emotionally devasted by the renewed cascade of memories, gets all choked up and turns away as the words fail them and the tears start? It's an easy result, a cheap shortcut to the emotional engagement of the audience.

Herzog doesn't do either of these things. He stops short or goes further, depending on your personal reaction to the film.

For all that Dengler is obviously a raconteur, a man who can effortlessly turn a phrase and bring a description to life - for all that the story he's telling is so dramatic that if the film consisted of Dengler facing the camera for two hours and talking without a single edit or bit of archive footage you'd still listen reverently until he'd got through recounting every last detail - Herzog doesn't desist from really getting to grips with the story; really finding his way into the time and the place and the savagery of it.

Herzog not only has Dengler go back to Laos, he has him -

Shit! I can't discuss why 'Little Dieter Needs to Fly' is so maverick a documentary and yet so perfectly Herzog without getting into explicit detail. And if anyone's reading this who hasn't seen 'Little Dieter Needs to Fly', I'd like to think you might want to track down a copy of the film and discover it for yourself without yours truly blurting out the very details that make it so special. Let me just say that Dieter Dengler is the perfect subject for Werner Herzog: he is equally a pragmatist, a poet, a realist and a romantic icon. When he talks about his buddies and his memories, or - in the final sequence - reunites with the pilot who spotted his distress signal and rescued him from VC country, the effect is devastating.

Herzog's documentary has nothing to do with war, troop deployment or US foreign policy. It has to do with the individual. It is essential viewing.

Conquest of the Useless

Can we agree that 'Fitzcarraldo' is Herzog's magnum opus, the most perfectly Herzogian thing in his filmography, and all the proof that one needs regarding the lengths the man is prepared to go in order to realise his vision?

We can? Thank you.

'Conquest of the Useless' (subtitled Reflections from the making of 'Fitzcarraldo') comprises Herzog's diaries, spanning June 1979 to December 1981, and documents the trials, tribulations and tendencies of its director to go native. Early entries see Herzog as Francis Ford Coppola's guest ("Coppola ... is displaying a strange combination of self-pity, neediness, professional work ethic, and sentimentality") while he labours on the script and deals with the moneymen:

"The unquestioned assumption is that a plastic model ship will be pulled over a ridge in a studio, or possibly in a botanical garden ... I told them the unquestioned assumption had to be a real steamship being hauled over a real mountain, though not for the sake of realism but for the stylization characteristic of grand opera. The pleasantries we exchanged from then on wore a thin coating of frost."

This is on page five. By page six (24 June 1979) we're in the jungle. It's not until page 117 (6 January 1981) that Herzog gets the first shot of 'Fitzcarraldo' in the can. 'Conquest of the Useless' is a very different beast to the usual "making of" text. Herzog's extended pre-production and location scouting in the jungle occupies nearly the first half of the book. He dwells less on the film project, writing instead of what he sees around him, of the indigenious population he meets, of lives the way they are lived in the most primitive of surroundings. When he writes of these things he is equal parts documentarist, participant and poet. In his prose as in the images of his films, Herzog brings to life landscapes and people most of us will never encounter, never see with our own eyes; but his account never feels as if it is being written on our behalf (Paul Theroux, great writer though he is, typifies this tendency), nor that he is playing up local colour for its own sake. Herzog is a poet of the extreme because, for him, the extreme is ordinary. Put him in a normal, ostensibly civilised scenario and he codifies it as something alien - evidenced by his slightly surreal depiction of San Francisco in the early entries.

Oh, did I say somewhere in that last paragraph that Herzog shot the first frame of 'Fitzcarraldo' in January 1981? Let me rephrase that. He shot the first frame of 'Fitzcarraldo' Version 1.0. Several weeks' worth of footage were shot with the original cast - Jason Robards as the eponymous would-be rubber baron, and Mick Jagger as his demented henchman - some of which remains, such as Fitzcarraldo's belltower declaration that he will build his opera house, and is featured in the documentary 'My Best Fiend'. It is interesting to speculate how 'Fitzcarraldo' starring Robards and Jagger would have turned out (the belltower scene suggests it could have been inspired and cringeingly embarrassing in roughly equal parts), but it wasn't to be.

Robards emerges as almost terrified by the jungle and appalled at the lack of creature comforts (though we have to remember that these are the perceptions of a man for whom the extreme is second nature; I'd probably have shared some of Robards' opinions). It's clear Herzog had no liking for him, even before Robards absconds, citing medical concerns, and damn near scuppers the production. Herzog's take on Jagger is undecided, admiring him for mucking in and driving fellow cast and crew members to their accommodation, then despairing of him for gloating over how much money he can get for some photos of a bikini'd Jerry Hall taken on set. Herzog sees this as the commercialisation of his vision and isn't happy about it.

After Robards departs, Herzog and co. resolutely remain in the jungle, clinging to what is left of the production. Two months later, Klaus Kinski takes on the role and filming resumes. Anyone who has seen 'My Best Fiend' will know that Kinski was Herzog's muse, nemesis and alter ego all rolled into one. They were bound together by a creative imperative, the fruitfulness of which was only equalled by its antagony. Their previous tropical collaboration, 'Aguirre, Wrath of God', culminated in Herzog forestalling Kinski's announced departure mid-shoot by threatening to empty a rifle into him. Both men must have known 'Fitzcarraldo' would be round two.

Put it this way: the fucking steamship enjoyed plainer sailing!

And yet Herzog is remarkably fair when he writes about Kinski. Sure, there are the expected tantrums, arguments and bouts of egomania, but equally Herzog writes of Kinski like a brother. This aspect of the latter half of 'Conquest of the Useless' proves as affecting as it is compelling. But what really makes the book such a wonderful and unmissable read is that the film, the ship, the crazed actor, the lunatic logistics or the director himself never force their way to the front of the narrative; the real star of Herzog's memoir is the jungle.

Fitzcarraldo

Some films are defined by a single scene or sequence:

‘Bullitt’ – the car chase.

‘The French Connection’ – the car/elevated train chase.

‘The Italian Job’ – bunch of Minis beetling about.

‘Apocalypse Now’ – the helicopter attack/Ride of the Valkyries.

Parenthetically: funny how all these films are defined, essentially, by modes of transport.

Mention ‘Fitzcarraldo’ to any serious film fan – or, more explicitly, just look at the poster – and you’re immediately in “ship gets dragged over mountain” territory.

Watching Herzog’s fourth collaboration with Kinski again recently, it struck me that, for audiences seeing the film for the first time (those, anyway, for whom the game hadn’t been given away by the poster), its central conceit must have been truly astounding. You see, it’s not till an hour and half in (‘Fitzcarraldo’ runs 157 minutes) that Kinski gleefully outlines his deliriously lunatic scheme to circumvent a dangerous set of rapids by dragging his rusting old wreck of a vessel a couple of miles overland at the point where two tributaries run closest to each other.

Up until this point, the film has been about something equally grandiose: the all-consuming obsession of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Fitzcarraldo is the name the natives give him) to bring opera to the jungle. The man engages in business ventures not for personal profit, but so that he can build an opera house in the outer reaches of nowhere and have Enrico Caruso open it.

A German-Irish ex-patriot, at sea amongst the rubber barons and dissipates who have achieved what all white men in far-flung corners of the globe manage to achieve (the raping of the land and the subjugation of the indigenous population), he struggles to make his fortune. His one ally, also his consort, is Molly (Claudia Cardinale), madame of a prosperous brothel. With unerring faith, she sinks her savings into his latest venture, the acquisition of a rust-tub boat and a claim on a chunk of land rife with rubber trees. The only reason Fitzcarraldo’s peers haven’t already exploited the territory is its inaccessibility.

Fitzcarraldo is a laughing stock, principally because of his last failed venture, the Trans-Andean Railway, a project that got no further forward than a station, a waiting room and a few dozen yards of track. Mentioned several times in dialogue, Herzog actually depicts this tremendous folly about an hour in, and it’s the first indication of the scope, madness and resilience of both Herzog’s film and its eccentric protagonist.

Of the films I mentioned at the start of this post, ‘Apocalypse Now’ has the closest parallels to ‘Fitzcarraldo’: jungle setting, troubled production, director lionised by the press as egomaniacal. Also, both are hugely visual and visionary. For want of a better word, epic.

And not just in terms of running time. It’s the sheer concept of what the film-makers went through in order to achieve their vision that leaves you reeling. With the anachronistic exception of a bulldozer that was used to level ground and, on occasion, give the ship a helping tug, everything that Herzog puts on screen was physically effected by his cast and crew.

It’s easy to be blasé about visual effects nowadays: CGI can pretty much give shape and form to anything. But ‘Fitzcarraldo’ was made over twenty-five years ago. No green-screen and digital imagery back then. What there was back then, and what most directors would have opted for, was model work. (Remember the Airfix-kit-in-a-swimming-pool special effects of costly flop ‘Raise the Titanic’?) Not Mr Herzog. He keeps it real. And thank God he does. Even after multiple viewings, ‘Fitzcarraldo’ continues to astound, inspire and delight me.

True, the spectacle, the visuals, the look of the film (a raised glass here to cinematographer Thomas Mauch) are amazing. But beyond that, and for all that Fitzcarraldo’s scheme ultimately fails, the most delightful aspect of the film is its exuberance. Compare Kinski’s character here to his portrayals of Aguirre (crazed, violent, egocentric), Dracula (vampire; ’nuff said) or Woyzeck (persecuted, paranoid, driven to violence). As Fitzcarraldo, he laughs, he smiles (whether he’s in Molly’s arms or being transported by a scratchy recording of Caruso), he embodies jubilation even though his plans come to naught … in short, he never stops dreaming.

Aside, perhaps, from ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film about failure that’s emerged as so gloriously life-affirming.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

‘Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes’, to use its stern-sounding original German title, was Werner Herzog’s first collaboration with Klaus Kinski and saddled both of them with reputations that neither ever really shook off:

Fraught production – check.

Inhospitable location – check (Herzog and Kinski would return to the jungle ten years later for the epic ‘Fitzcarraldo’).

Maverick director vs. egomaniacal actor – check.

The conflict between Herzog and Kinski continued across another four films, and was revisited, years after Kinski’s death, in Herzog’s ‘My Best Fiend’, a film that is part-documentary, part-black-Valentine.

‘Aguirre’ is set in 1560 and chronicles the journey, deep into the Peruvian rainforest, of an invading Spanish army in search of the legendary (and determinedly non-existent) city of El Dorado. The film opens with an extraordinary shot of a thousand Conquistadores in full armour and their captured indian guides/sherpas hauling pigs, horses, llamas, provisions and cannons down from the Andes into the jungle. The route is treacherous, the mountainside shrouded in mist. Herzog films their descent almost documentary-style: he’s not trying to impress by directing a big, show-offy scene; he’s simply recording their progress.

And that’s what he does for the rest of the film, recording not only their descent from the Andes, but their descent into treachery, distrust, death and – in Aguirre’s case – madness. But without any melodrama or moralizing. There are no big, actorly, grandstanding scenes. Even Kinski, never the subtlest performer, gives a controlled, gaunt-eyed performance (Herzog has said that he dealt with Kinski’s excesses by baiting him before the cameras rolled, letting him rant himself into exhaustion, then filming the scene).

There are notable performances, too, from Roy Guerra as Don Pedro de Ursua, whose leadership Aguirre overthrows; and Peter Berling as the pitiful Don Fernando de Guzman, whom Aguirre handpicks to replace Ursua. Aguirre takes his rebellion to extremes, declaring that the group are no longer answerable to church or state, and even goes as far as “crowning” Guzman King of the New World. Watch Peter Berling’s face in this scene: he communicates cowardice (Guzman knows he’s nothing but Aguirre’s puppet), misery and helplessness in just a few seconds without a hint of overacting. Guerra, too, effectively suggests the wounded Ursua’s struggle to retain dignity while the expedition – originally under his charge – draws closer to self-destruction the further into the jungle they penetrate.

But the real stars of the show are Herzog himself and cinematographer Thomas Mauch. ‘Aguirre’ bristles with stunning imagery. There’s the fog-wreathed mountainside at the start. There’s a hypnotically brilliant shot which holds on the tumbling brown river, muddy banks overhung with vegetation to either side, before cutting to a close-up of churning water – these two simple shots occupy over a minute of screen time. There’s the jungle itself – forget the lush, verdant expanse of Hollywood productions; Herzog’s jungle is dark, humid, visceral and alive.

And then there’s the unforgettable final image: Aguirre stumbling dazed around a slowly sinking raft overrun with chittering monkeys, delivering a crazed monologue: “I, the Wrath of God, will marry my own daughter and with her I will found the purest dynasty the world has ever seen. We shall rule this entire continent. We shall endure. I am the Wrath of God.” His daughter, probably mercifully for her, is dead by this point. So is everyone else. The only thing that endures is Aguirre’s madness.