Clemens scheitz biography sample
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An Ecstatic Truth
Stroszek (1977): A Nowhere Man in Wisconsin, or: the Perpetually Dancing Chicken
Posted by Ben on September 6, 2010 · Leave a Comment
I celebrate Werner Herzog’s birthday with a (re)viewing of his equally absurd and insightful portrait of both Bruno S. and and society. Also, I’ve been told there’s a dancing chicken.
Filed under Reviews· Tagged with 1977, alienation, America, Anchor Bay, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans, biography, birthday, Bruno S., Clemens Scheitz, documentary, drama, ecstatic truth, Eva Mattes, German New Wave, Germany, immigrant, prostitution, Sonny Terry, Stroszek, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Werner Herzog
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By Roger Ebert / July 7, 2002
Who else but Werner Herzog would make a film about a retarded ex-prisoner, a little old man and a prostitute, who leave Germany to begin a new life in a house trailer in Wisconsin? Who else would shoot the film in the hometown of Ed Gein, the murderer who inspired "Psycho?" Who else would cast all the local roles with locals? Who else would end the movie with a policeman radioing, "We've got a truck on fire, can't find the switch to turn the ski lift off, and can't stop the dancing chicken. Send an electrician.”
"Stroszek" (1977) is one of the oddest films ever made. It is impossible for the audience to anticipate a single shot or development. We watch with a kind of fascination, because Herzog cuts loose from narrative and follows his characters through the relentless logic of their adventure. Then there is the haunting impact of the performance by Bruno S., who is at every moment playing himself.
The personal history
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SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a story with a beginning and an end; or at least, being based on a historical case, it feels as if it ought to have a klar beginning and end. In reality, Kaspar Hauser fryst vatten an unfinished story – indeed, a story about unfinished stories. It fryst vatten, as the English title suggests, an unanswered question; the German title actually means ‘every man for himself and God against all’, but still the connotations of scattered disunity support the sense of enigma. No unifying answer can be achieved in a world where only God knows the answers and where humans can only cling to their own provisional, partial guesses. In a key scen, the mysterious foundling Kaspar (Bruno S.) is sitting with Käthe (Brigitte Mira), housekeeper to his tutor Professor Daumer (Walter Ladengast). He proposes to tell her a story about the desert, but admits he doesn’t know the ending.
Käthe reminds him that Daumer believes