The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Herzog's film is based upon the true and mysterious story of Kaspar Hauser, a young man who suddenly appeared in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to talk or walk, and bearing a strange note.

Director:

Werner Herzog

Writer:

Werner Herzog (book)

Stars:

Bruno S., Walter Ladengast, Brigitte Mira

5 wins & 3 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Bruno S.	...	Kaspar Hauser
Walter Ladengast	...	Professor Daumer
Brigitte Mira	...	Kathe, Servant
Willy Semmelrogge	...	Circus director
Michael Kroecher	...	Lord Stanhope
Hans Musäus	...	Unknown Man
Henry van Lyck	...	Cavalry Captain
Gloria Doer	...	Frau Hiltel
Volker Prechtel	...	Hiltel the prison guard
Herbert Achternbusch	...	Bavarian Chicken Hypnotizer
Wolfgang Bauer
Wilhelm Bayer	...	Taunting Farmboy
Franz Brumbach
Johannes Buzalski
Helmut Döring	...	Little King

Storyline

Herzog's film is based upon the true and mysterious story of Kaspar Hauser, a young man who suddenly appeared in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to talk or walk, and bearing a strange note; he later explained that he had been held captive in a dungeon of some sort for his entire life that he could remember, and only recently was he released, for reasons unknown. His benefactor attempts to integrate him into society, with intriguing results.

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Plot Keywords:

nuremberg | captive | unknown | new german cinema | playing piano | 

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Genres:

Biography | Drama | History

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

West Germany

Language:

German

Release Date:

1 November 1974 (West Germany)

Also Known As:

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Filming Locations:

Germany

Company Credits

Production Co:

Werner Herzog Filmproduktion,Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF),Filmverlag der Autoren

Technical Specs

Runtime:

110 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor) (uncredited)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Werner Herzog's said at his Rogue Film School, that the following scenes were shot with a Super-8mm camera: a) The opening scene on the river. b) The montage of landscape shots early in the film. c) Right after the man in black teaches Kaspar how to walk. d) The Caucasus pyramid sequence. e) The caravan in the desert with the old man tasting the sand. Herzog talked about how, for some of the landscape shots early in the film, he mounted a telephoto lens on the end of wide angle lens onto his Super 8 camera. This distorted the edges of the images and created a white/halo effect around the frame. On the DVD audio commentary of this film, he mentions how for the Caucasus pyramid sequence he projected the image onto a screen and then re-photographed the image with a 35mm camera at a different frame rate from the projected speed. He also used this technique with the caravan in the desert sequence.

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Goofs

After Kaspar is left in the town square, there is one shot of him where the way he holds the note, and the way the bandanna is tied, that is different from before or after.

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Quotes

Professor Daumer: Kaspar, what's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?
Kaspar Hauser: It feels strong in my heart... The music feels strong in my heart... I feel so unexpectedly old...
Professor Daumer: You've been such a short time in the world, Kaspar...
Kaspar Hauser: Why is everything so hard for me? Why can't I play the piano like I can breathe?
Professor Daumer: In the two short years you have been here with me, you have learned so much! The people here want to help you make up for lost time.
Kaspar Hauser: The people are like wolves to me.
Professor Daumer: No. You mustn't say that...

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Crazy Credits

Opening credits prologue: One Sunday in 1828 a ragged boy was found abandoned in the town of N. He could hardly walk and spoke but one sentence.

Later, he told of being locked in a dark cellar from birth. He had never seen another human being, a tree, a house before.

To this day no one knows where he came from - or who set him free.

Don't you hear that horrible screaming all around you? That screaming men call silence?

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Connections

Featured in I Am My Films - A Portrait of Werner Herzog (1978)

User Reviews

One of my top ten films of all time!

Herzog has a way with documenting history as if it was our own past we were re-living. It all seems strangely familiar, yet slightly surreal. This film is rich with detail of the period (19th century), yet it's not the slightest bit in-your-face like so many of the current period films that seem to be about nothing more than lush furniture and the people who sit on them. Yet there are images here that you'll never forget! There are some especially stunning sepia dream sequences of an Arabian caravan strolling in soft, slow-motion across a windswept desert. They reminded me of Sam Fuller's effective use of raw colour footage of distant lands in "Shock Corridor". Images that seem to burst out at us from the B&W angst of a mental ward. Such contradictory images seem perfectly normal in Herzog's world, since after all, they're from the world of our dreams.

As always, Herzog finds great music for his score in this film, and he uses it in a very subtle way. But he also is a master at allowing silences to tell part of his story. If one is really listening, they can hear a great many things that define the world that his characters are inhabiting. This of course, was more obvious in films like 'Aguirre', where one swears they can still hear the wild birds squawking in their head for days! Can any film-going experience be more real?

But this film is not all just sound and imagery! The story is a puzzle. It's up to us viewers to decide who this man is and how his mind functions. It also challenges us to think about how our own minds function. While various "instructors" try to cram a lifetime of education into Kaspar's brain in just a few short years, we are forced to re-evaluate the logic that we have been taught. This is illustrated with great tongue-in-cheek humour when Kaspar approaches a lesson in logic with a Zen-like understanding that leaves his instructors livid. Needless to say, this film is a good preamble to "Being There", only more subtle, more haunting, and far more memorable.

The film will also bring to mind "The Elephant Man", not just in its depiction of circus "freaks", but in its illustrations of cruelty, madness, kindness and alienation. It is in essence, a movie about humanity. Told in a poetic vision with just the right doses of wit, intelligence and mystery. For this is, The MYSTERY of Kaspar Hauser. The film never pretends to be a documentation. It is simply an interpretation. One man's imagining of what might have gone inside the mind of a man who was born into the world at sixteen. See it with that in mind, and you'll have one of the richest movie-going experiences in your life!