The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

"[Werner Herzog made] things even more interesting by casting a 41-year-old street musician credited as "Bruno S." who had spent decades in and out of mental institutions and had never acted before. The result is one of the more odd and affecting performances in Herzog's movies – part guileless, part gimmicky and all genuinely WTF. A bold experiment that paid off in a big way." —David Fear & Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

One of Herzog's most beloved films is based upon the true 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 eventually managed to explain that he’d been held captive in a dungeon of some sort for his entire life, and only after decades was he released, for reasons still unknown. Hauser's benefactor attempts to integrate him into society with extremely intriguing results but the damaged man may not be able to escape his past after all. After the film's lead actor, Bruno S., passed away in 2010, Herzog remarked, "In all my films, and with all the great actors with whom I have worked, he was the best. There is no one who comes close to him. I mean in his humanity, and the depth of his performance, there is no one like him."

Restoration courtesy of Shout! Factory and the American Genre Film Archive.

Werner Herzog began his filmmaking career at the young age of 19 and, over the next six decades, established himself as one of cinema's eminent directors - and among its most daring. A leader of the New German Cinema movement, with a wealth of celebrated documentaries and influential fiction features, a modest career in front of the camera, and a voice that can soothe any soul, Herzog is as intense a figure as the characters he puts on screen. Roger Ebert put it best: "[Werner Herzog] gave me a model for the film artist: fearless, driven by his subjects, indifferent to commercial considerations, trusting his audience to follow him anywhere. In the thirty-eight years since I saw my first Herzog film, after an outpouring of some fifty features and documentaries, he has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular."

We are pleased to present new restorations of four of Herzog's most celebrated works: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Nosferatu the Vampyre, and Fitzcarraldo. These four films showcase the themes he has found most enthralling throughout his prolific career: men with unusual obsessions, the futile struggle against nature, and the pursuit of images never yet seen.

A $30 series pass that grants admission for one person to all 4 films in the series is available for purchase.

Check out the rest of our Herz So Good: Four by Werner Herzog program!