User Reviews

Each of Herzog's films is an experiment in one way or another. Heart of Glass is one of the most overtly experimental of the lot. Like almost all of Herzog's films, Heart of Glass makes the most of spectacular landscapes and visual context - every scene is, in its own way, a beautiful still-life. However, in Heart of Glass, the effect of the visual context is compounded by the fact that almost every member of the cast - throughout the entire film - is in a state of hypnosis. Predictably, the acting is, to say the least, avant-garde. Nevertheless, characterization is strong, and more importantly, this bizarre, somewhat jarring method of execution creates the film's time and place just as much as the gorgeous landscape shots.

Heart of Glass takes place in 19th century Bavaria. The Director's comments (always worth hearing after viewing a Herzog film) indicate that Herzog grew up in a place very much like this. This doesn't stop Herzog from turning his keen analysis of the human condition and modal personalities to attack the central problems of life in this time and place. The story involves a small town in crisis. The one person who holds the secret that is the key to the town's prosperity has taken that secret to his grave, and the master of the glass factory in which he worked is losing his mind looking for a solution. Meanwhile, one of the film's more sympathetic character's, a deeply insightful prophet/lunatic shepherd (with no sheep), Hias, predicts an even greater crisis.

Herzog's most consistent theme - his view of human nature - is powerfully illustrated in Heart of Glass. As the great director has often done, Herzog universalizes his view by giving us an essentially alien, dream-like setting and atmosphere. The effect of the cast's hypnotic state is even more jarring than the sheer intensity of Klaus Kinski's performances in many of Herzog's films from this period, and Heart of Glass is as avant-garde as some of his later efforts (such as The Great Blue Yonder). In other words, the average cinema-goer will have a difficult time with this one.

Recommended for Herzog, avant-garde and art-film fans. Not recommended for anybody else.

Filmed on beautiful locations in Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and the USA, "Heart of Glass" (1976) is a poetic reflection on existence.

Containing a little less absurdity than, for example, "Stroszek" (1977) and "Even Dwarfs Started Small" (1970), this work by German auteur Werner Herzog is rather a dramatic and thoughtful consideration of the importance of knowledge.

Heart of Glass (1976)

Werner Herzog may well be one of my most cherished humans on the planet. If he were giving a lecture on the idiosyncrasies of his films, I would like to be there. If he was sitting on a sidewalk eating chips, I too would like to be there. He is without a doubt one of the cinema's most fascinating minds ever. He is, in my opinion, the King of the New German Wave of the 70s. And he still makes great and exciting movies! One of his most enchanting moments in his long and ambitious career (really, was there any man more ambitious in films than he?), is Heart of Glass, a totally bizarre portrait of a town gone mad. Although the picture for all intensive purposes defies the boundaries of any genre, it has been described as an absurdest drama-dy. That's a pretty suiting classification. If Heart of Glass can be described in one word, it would have to be absurd.

The film's protagonist Hias, a prophet of sorts. He can see the future, and seems usually to be depressed with the burden. His village has just lost the proprietor of its livelihood. The foreman of their red Ruby Glass factory, the only man who knew the secret of how to make it, died without ever getting the chance to pass it on. The town now searches in vain for the secret. Without it they grow depressed and begin losing their sanity, particularly the man who owns the glass works factory in his bid to discover the secrets.

That's really all that I can disclose about the film. Herzog's film is one based on style and atmosphere, getting at something underneath its story. He famously hypnotized the entire cast for each scene, save for the actor playing Hias and the professional glassblowers. Much of the dialogue was then improvised in a hypnotic state by the actors. Herzog described how an uneducated man in the cast was hypnotized, and then told to read a poem on the wall. The man replied he couldn't' see it without its glasses. Herzog told him to just move forward and he would see it. He then reportedly read off a stunning poem - a work of his own mind, since no poem ever existed on that wall. The hypnosis not only gives the actor's improvisations an peculiarity, but also their manner of delivery. It's bizarre, but totally encompassing.

It's moments of comedy are bizarre but joyful. Two men argue about who will die first, then the townspeople find them and argue which one is still alive. Later, the live man takes the dead man to the pub for a dance as a hurdy gurdy man plays.

The film starts with a long shot of Hias sitting in the mountain field watching cows in the fog. Herzog then employs footage he shot of clouds in the mountains, taken over the course of days. One shot in particular appears as though a wave of clouds is invading the hills. It's an absolutely breathtaking shot, and one that I've never forgotten, and likely never will.

Herzog once famously suggested that he directs landscapes more so than actors. In Heart of Glass he gives ample evidence to his claim. He takes joy in cutting away to seemingly completely unrelated events: a mountain waterfall, close up, as Hias narrates (it is claimed that this shot will have a hypnotic effect, especially if you speak German and do not have to read the subtitles); smoking springs and ancient trees at Yosemite; and a finale that involves a 500 year old monastery on a steep rocky Island off Ireland (Skellig Islands, fascinating place). The imagery and moody accomplishments of Heart of Glass are difficult to describe in words. It's one of the most visually arresting movie's I've ever seen. Herzog shot the film just a few miles from where he was raised in Bavaria. To list all the stunning shots in the film would be a tedious task. Virtually ever outdoors shot triumphs. It's visual poetry is profound.

Heart of Glass is one of Herzog's most unabashedly poetic and abstract films. Who else but Herzog would hypnotize his entire cast for artistic ambitions? It's a glorious film that thrives on its own integrity, and the mad visions of its ingenious helmer.

This is an offbeat and provoking film regarding the notorious craftsman of a small village carrying out glassworks and dying suddenly without revealing the secret to the known "Ruby Glass". This small village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works but things go wrong when the main foreman dies without transmit his craft wisdom . The little town slides into a deep crisis , and the owner of the glassworks becomes obsessed with the lost secret asking for help a wise man . At the village a mysterious young (Josef Bierbichler) appears telling weird prophecies about a sad future of the people .

Herzog's film is based upon the true and mysterious story of the creators of a brilliant crystal , it stars a rare prophet , a very strange and fantastic character well played by Josef Bierbichler . Concerning the deep distresses happen when the foreman of glassworks dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass creating a real depression and sadness at the village , then showing up a bizarre chracter named "Hias" -legendary Nostradamus lookalike- who is actually based on a Bavarian prophet called Mühlhias. A movie that shares with ¨Aguirre Wrath of God¨ and ¨Kaspar Hauser¨ a fascination with rare and outlandish roles . Not the same dizzy folly as Aguirre , but Herzog´s similarly long perspective conjures as a brooding and thought-provoking film of man's aimless tracks throughout a society in crisis . Josef Bierbichler provides a decent as well as agreeable acting as the mysterious young with unknown past . Accompanied by ordinary actors from Herzog factory as Clemens Scheitz and Volker Prechtel. However , most actors were really hypnotized by Werner Herzog himself and play under hypnosis on big screen.

It contains hypnotic , colorful and luxurious cinematography by Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein , Herzog's regular , being shot on various location in Monument Valley, Utah, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Niagara Falls, New York, Alaska, USA , Skellig Michael, County Kerry, Skellig Rocks, County Kerry, Ireland , Frauenaus bei Zwiesel, Bavarian Forest, Bavaria, Germany , Pischelsdorf bei Arnstorf, Bavaria,Walchsing Castle, Bavaria, and Switzerland . Accompanying a fascinating and riveting musical score by Popol Vuh . The motion picture was competently directed by Werner Herzog . Including some landmarks , as containing long, extended landscape shots . This great German director Herzog has made thoughtful and interesting films , such as : "Fata Morgana" , "Aguirre Wrath of God" , "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser", "Heart of Glass" , "Stroszek", "Woyzeck" , "Nosferatu the Vampire", "Where the Green Ants Dream" , "Cobra Verde" ,"Lessons in Darkness", "My Dearest Enemy", "Invincible" , "The White Diamond", "Grizzly Man", "Rescue Dawn" , among others . Rating : 6.5/10 , acceptable and passable but extremely slow-moving and a little bit boring . The flick will appeal to Werner Herzog followers.

Unlike Herzog's other movies, with their super-realistic substrate on which he paints our miserable human condition, Heart of Glass is an allegory, a fable told to peasants as a cautionary tale: the human heart is precious... and the peasants are us, and we violate that warning everyday, in a thousand little ways, with our stupidity and our pettiness...

Is the movie slow? perhaps... Do I still remember scenes vividly from the movie as if I saw it yesterday, though it's been more than 20 years? oh yes... this movie haunts me, unlike any other movie I've ever seen

The foreman of a small village glassworks dies without revealing the secret to the famous "Ruby Glass".

This is very much a Werner Herzog film. Although the plot itself is interesting, and allows us to see a small village collapse in on itself because f its failure to diversify its economy, it really is not about the plot at all. It is a collection of unusual characters -- and sometimes just strange faces -- that make up Herzog's world. Not having been to Germany, I can't say, but I suspect his view and the real world are very much in opposition! What lessons are we to draw from this film? I have no idea. I mean, you know, besides the idea that it's important to write things down in case of our untimely demise!

It's impossible to love this film, and it is as impossible to hate it. The plot is slight and silly, and the dialogue and acting are unintentionally hilarious. Heart of Glass could stand as the archetype of the so-called "pretentious European cinema," you know, the kind you would have seen Mike Meyers make fun of in his "Sprockets" sketches on SNL. In fact, I don't know of anything that comes even close to Heart of Glass in its pretentions. The film is as shallow as could be. Perhaps those with overactive imaginations could "figure it out," but I don't want to waste that time.

However, Herzog is an amazingly skilled director. The script may suck, but the visuals, the cinematography and the mise-en-scene, represent some of the greatest moments in all cinema. It's not a non-stop beauty festival, but there are many individual scenes of outrageous splendor. If only Herzog had planned the script as intricately as he searched out locations for the shoot. What this film really reminds me of an Andrei Tarkovsky or Michelangelo Antonioni film with no substance whatsoever. I can't give Heart of Glass more than a 7/10, but, in many ways, it's a must see. If you've never seen a Herzog film before, though, avoid this one. Start with Aguirre the Wrath of God or, my favorite so far, Fitzcarraldo.

As I watched "Heart of Glass", I couldn't believe the complete lack of energy that dominated the film. The first 8 minutes or so consisted of yodeling and scenes of the mountain shot through a gauze-like filter. Then, when people came into the film and started talking, they all seemed to act as if they're all suffering from an overdose of sleeping pills. I have NEVER seen such a slow and lifeless beginning to a film and it did feel rather pretentious. Sure, the town is saddened by the recent death of a master glass maker--but even then, showing them sad would have been a major improvement--they were downright zombie-like. --and they had tons more energy. Because of this complete lack of any energy, I was very tempted to turn off the film. But, because I usually like director Werner Herzog's films, I decided to stick with it a bit longer. However, try as I might, I felt the life being drained from me with each passing minute. Truly, this is an almost impossible to watch film. And this is saying a lot, as I have seen and enjoyed tons of pretentious art films! The biggest problem with me and this films is that although the towns people SHOULD have been depressed, none were upset---just catatonic. It made the film utterly joyless and SHOULD have been better. For example, "La Femme du Boulanger" from Marcel Pagnol had a very similar theme but was clever and fun--and is one of the best French films of the 1930s. Unlike "Heart of Glass", it did NOT feature scenes showing a pile of dead flies or Hias the fortune-teller talking about the apocalypse!

Well, i completely disagree with the guy from NYU. I've seen this film seven times between 1978 and 1991 (although in its original german version) and found it absolutely hypnotizing. This film simply is a piece of art and cannot be measured with hollywood standards. Besides 2001: a space oddyssey and Chabrols 1969 masterpiece 'The beast must die' this is my altime favourite.

Hypnotized actors, in this story of how something as fragile as glass can bring on the apocalypse for a small German community. There's a character who predicts the future, and narrates in some of Herzog's most poetic dialog yet. The scenes at the end overlooking the cliffs above the Atlantic and their dream of "worlds to come", keep this from being your usual end of all things story. For Herzog there aren't ends, just junctures where one thing dies and another begins. Cycles in history (reflected in the mysterious prophets discussion of greater apocalypses to come in the future world wars 1 and 2).

The man who can see the future (and who is of course blamed for all the towns ills), at one point wishes he was out of his cell, and in the next scene he's walking in the woods talking to himself, giving the film a strange tinge of magic realism(though realism and this film don't exactly mix). Strange, difficult, but unforgettable, and a must for Herzog fans. (also it's where the Blondie song comes from)

This is a beautifully made film and is indeed beautiful to look at. The landscapes, manipulated and natural are awe inspiring and the interiors almost painterly. However, it is undeniably slow. It is also unworldly. We have a peasant making rather odd prophesies and a cast, acting under hypnosis, responding or not as the mood takes them. Certainly a very different cinema experience but a little wayward and unfocused for my liking. I have to say, though, thanks to the wonder of DVDs, this does come with an accompanying conversation with the director. Watching the commentary track is for me a far more engaging and satisfying experience. Enjoyable too! Herzog is simply marvellous in giving full explanations in instances such as the circumstances of the hypnosis and totally uncooperative when the questioning gets a bit close to seeking 'the answer'. I always hate it when an artist is asked to interpret his work (as if there would be any point in it if it can be fully explained another way) and here Herzog slaps down his interviewer on several occasions. Quite right. Well worth watching/listening for an alternative view on the art of film.

Herzog's film about a small village that goes insane after their glassblower dies without revealing the secret to his ruby glass is pretentious yet interesting. The acting is strange - not good, not bad, just strange. The highlight of the movie is its brilliant visuals and cinematography. There is a lot to think about here, but Herzog never really makes it clear what he wants the viewer to think about. It's this confusion and lack of coherency that causes the movie to suffer. Overall, a decent effort and a good experiment but can't stand up to his other works, which offer some of the same themes in a better package.

In 18th century rural Bavaria, a renowned glassblower dies, taking the secret of his popular ruby glass to his grave. The young master of the glass works is the de facto ruler of the village on account of the work his factory provides the locals, he obsessively seeks the answer to the mystery of the ruby glass.

When I first saw this movie, I had literally no idea that the vast majority of the cast had been hypnotised by director Werner Herzog before shooting their scenes. It's one of these situations which is common with Herzog, where knowing about what he was doing behind the scenes is instrumental in appreciating the film itself. The dazed performances of the cast are put into some kind of perspective with foresight that is for sure. I think one of the ideas behind the hypnosis was to illustrate that these characters are mindlessly following an impossible dream; one they can surely never achieve and one solely based on nothing beyond economics. Whatever the reason it is a wilfully bizarre idea and the results are, to say the least, peculiar. The film has a somewhat deliberate pace and it mixes in Herzog's distinctive mixture of documentary realism with stylised weirdness. Like some of his other oddball efforts such as Fata Morgana (1971), this one falls pretty clearly in avant-garde territory on account of the very strange acting performances. It is essentially a story about a community gone mad, with a shepherd prophet in the periphery predicting many things to come. As is the way though, like many other Herzog's there are moments of visual splendour like fantastic views of the mountains which are like scenes from 19th century romantic paintings come to life, while there are also some customary smaller scale moments of fascination such as the scene showing a glassblower make a small ornamental horse in a seemingly effortless fashion.

Ultimately, this is another of those films which is clearly only going to appeal to a few people. Its sheers oddness will alienate a few and it is true that it does take a bit of effort to watch at times. But it is another that highlights the highly original mind of Herzog and the way he has furrowed his own distinct path, this is probably one of his most unusual.

At a Q&A after an appearance at a week long run of his films in SF, Herzog was asked whether, since all his characters seem to be destroyed in the process of pursuing their dreams, he felt that all human striving to realize our dreams was in vain. "If you and I were old friends sitting over beers, you might get me to talk about that..." he responded. So I asked him if the the arabesque at the end of Heart of Glass held a clue. He responded by repeating that true story of fishermen who left for a rock on the horizon. This movie is a dream about people who allow their dreams to be controlled by the vagaries of the society and economy of the moment, because when that is gone, and they have no personal dream, they are truly lost. Warning: All of Herzog's films tend to be poetic allegories and as translucent as the clouds rolling through the Alps in slow motion to the dream music of Popol Vu (AKA Florian Fricke, who does Herzog's soundtracks and tantric instrumentals.)

An yes, this movie is more obtuse, dream like and surreal than even his usual stuff. So if you want Sound of Music Alpine scenes, or real life MTV, you will hate this film. But if you've ever dreamed in color, you might enjoy it.

Werner Herzog's "Heart of Glass" is a beautiful film, yet certainly not intended simply for popular audiences, and it aptly deserves the title of "art-house film". Which other film have you seen recently – or ever – in which most of the cast have been hypnotised so as to portray characters haunted and falling into despair (and, I should add, over something as trivial as losing the formula to make ruby-coloured glass)? Herzog also intertwines the film with long scenes that don't truly add much to the narrative yet create a sense of ambiance and mood. One scene shows working scenes of professional glass-blowers (who are some of the only characters not under hypnosis – obviously that would be dangerous!), and several others evoke Casper David Friedrich's "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog", in which the soothsayer Hias sits and observes the beauty of nature. These long scenes – edited from clips of Bavaria, Yellowstone National Park and Ireland – are certainly beautiful, and I could imagine that they would be incredible when blown up on a proper cinema screen. These quasi-documentary scenes are certainly the best in the film, and overall add to a greater sense of Brechtian Verfremdung (defamiliarisation), encouraging the viewer not to get lost in the story but to think critically on the whole piece.

Yet the experimental nature also does disservice to the film. The pace is slow, which is fine for the quasi-documentary scenes, but the hypnotised cast don't really help to speed things up at all in the narrative segments. Their behaviour is interesting to watch, but the defamiliarisation used here is just too experimental for its own good. "Heart of Glass" is very beautiful yet can be somewhat boring in parts, and it would be worth seeing with that in mind.

perhaps one of the most original films ever made. hauntingly beautiful. the hypnotized actors are used to an eerie and mesmerizing effect. a very subtle work. very disjointed and truly experimental.

Heart of Glass is a period piece, not merely because of its probable 19th century time period, but because of when it was filmed, what footage was used, the music, the "acting" (appropriate in quotes), and the experimental attitude. Werner Herzog has always been one of the most unconventional and challenging of filmmakers- of himself and for his audience- but in this case his challenge almost becomes more of a gimmick. I wonder if my reaction to these non-professionals Herzog has here would be any different if I was not aware before that all of the actors were hypnotized, save for Hias (who, to be honest, could've fooled me with how his 'performance' goes). Maybe not by much; like Jean-Luc Godard, whom Herzog once said is like intellectual counterfeit money, Herzog used his cast as much as gets them to be their unnatural selves by having them almost as mouthpieces to say his dialog, more leaning to being stylized poetry, as much as their sort of physical presence being controlled to the note. Also like Godard, he attempts to combine this with a technique in composition that merges documentary with a sensibility that is as well closer to a form of poetic, personal expression. Unfortunately like Godard (I mean later Godard though), it doesn't really fly.

It may for some, and in fact it's up there on lists of Herzog fans as one of the best. But the problem is that Herzog is so wrapped up in how everything should try to be in evocation and, in his own usually warped way, provocation, that its a style that can shut out the viewer from what should be a rewardingly hypnotic experience. But even if there was no knowledge of the hypnosis of the cast, things still feel off; at times I almost felt like I was watching some demented hippie filmmaker from the period waxing and waning in 19th century garb about random intonations in nature or what the 'ruby glass' has in significance, with stares and glazed looks and demented laughter. It's not un-merited for a man of such immense talent and artistry of Herzogs's to experiment and push the envelope of how a story can be told and how to get characters on screen in a way that is totally his own. The problem though, which is usually not the case particularly with his prime work in the 1970s, is to experiment without much of a real story to work with, or for that matter any characters to really give a s*** about. The main character, Hias (Bierbichler), is the one who gets the town into its sort of madness, but I didn't even really get this sense until more than halfway into the film. By the end, even as Herzog's reached something of a quasi-resolution with the factory burning down, his message (which does lie somewhere in the film) about the beauty and dangers of a 'cult' mentality lays in a muck of flat scenes of symbolism.

Needless to say, however, Herzog tripping over himself, in my opinion, contains moments of wicked absurdity that are quintessential, and moments where the documentary style works strongest, as well as his ever strong eye for 'adequate images'. Maybe the funniest scene, amid two cartoonish looking fellows sitting at a table, has these guys in a daze working out their issues with glasses of beer: one throws a glass at the other's head, without any response, as well as the other just dumping the beer on his head. A moment like this, or the scattered laughter during a botched glass-making attempt, rises to Herzog as a subtle master of weird comedy. It was also worthwhile to actually see how the glass-making process actually worked, as Herzog's eye for men in a physical act like this was pretty interesting. I even dug the whole fast-speed shot of the clouds running over the valley. But even in getting his footage of landscapes, some of it seems like it's aged, put to Popol Vuh music that accentuates its 'trippiness' where it doesn't need it. And it's sad to admit that by having characters that give off a totally empty aura in exquisitely framed and lit compositions aren't a good match.

For me, which it won't be for everyone seeing the film as some may be even more turned off by as being totally boring, which is sort of isn't despite its pretensions and for those who find in it great and moving art which is understandable, it's not a success. But as with directors like Lynch and Woody Allen and even Godard to a degree I'd rather watch a moment of stumbling than a complacent work by a hack Hollywood director. In the midst of the muddle, at the least, there are some bright spots of artistic expression.

A very unique film full of imagery and ideas. However one should only see it if they are prepared to open up their minds. This is by no means a conventional film. The actors are said to be hypnotized which adds to the apocalyptic atmosphere of the film. It is like a work of art, a painting which gives us only a glimpse of the director's inner world.

'Heart of Glass' was quite the daring experiment from the extraordinary German filmmaker Werner Herzog. He hypnotized all the actors except one man; a mystic who is trying to save a village from destroying itself. The scenery is stunning and so is the music. The yodeling at the begging of the film is hair-raising and unforgettable. Other than that, 'Heart of Glass' does not make any sense, especially the last scene. The final scene has nothing to do with the main story. The final scene has nothing to do with anything in general. Also, the hypnotized actors look goofy and silly most of the time rather than being in a trance-like state. It is a good thing when artists try to experiment like this, but in this case, I would consider the experiment a failure. Watch some other Herzog films, especially the ones with Klaus Kinski.

This is a truly mesmerizing movie experience. It manages to balance that fine line between stylization and total realism, not unlike Kubrick, though he never ventured this far. The cinematography is almost like in a documentary, but the performances and narrative is totally abstract and stylized. In my opinion, it succesfully transports the viewer into another reality. It is a film that invites you to meditate and free-associate at your own will. The narrative, linear but disjointed, suggests a breakdown of time itself, a consequence of the lost secret of the glass. The long sections with hypnotizing music and magical landscapes balances well with the rest of the story, and there are scenes were dialogue, visuals and music, creates an incredibly dense atmosphere. There is also a welcome sense of humor which prevents it from becoming overly pretentious. I found it to be a very inspiring and unique movie, and I recommend it to anyone tired of the ordinary.