Red-Barracuda 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.

Alenbalz Yes there is some stunning photography, even some great acting, but where's the story? Someone dies, with a formula for making a particular type of glass, and somehow it leads to the gradual demise of the enterprise and the owner of the business, who goes insane. It's actually insane to think that would actually happen, (except in a movie: which this clearly is): an affluent gentry businessman loosing his marbles so quickly over a product only they (his factory foreman) produce, and not having the business acumen or vision to have a back-up or alternative product to deal with an eventuality like this. With that level of stupidity and know-how about the most important product of his business, I'm surprised he didn't get fleeced by his workers, but that's not the story in this movie (remember it's a fiction movie). So apart from the idiotic lord and master (big boss) and a bunch of very talented but intellectually deficient glassblowers we also have a narrator disguised as a prophet who tells us what is about to happen in the very short term (though he doesn't foresee the mob turning against him, like they did with Jesus) and some future period (remembering that this movie is set in the 17-18 hundreds: so yeah, very easy and clever to have this prophet predict things that we know happened after the era of the movie). There's really NO character development, or reason why things happen the way they do, other than perhaps to give the narrator cum prophet some credibility. Despite being a fairly central figure in the movie, we learn absolutely nothing only about the prophet, who he is? where he came from, what his mission is (other than to take us, the viewers, a paragraph or two ahead of the current movie scene) or why the (stupid) village people don't take his prophesies more seriously, after witnessing the accuracy of his predictions. So I disagree with all those who rave about this movie being a great artistic feat, because there's really no take-home message after watching it, nor is it a very engaging or thought provoking movie, just a very simple fiction story without any real drama or direction.

jzappa In the story of the breakdown of a small glassblowing factory in a Bavarian village around 1800, Werner Herzog's Heart of Glass sees the melancholy of communities depending on manufacture, the disconnectedness of people without a feeling of purpose. Dashed hopes and visions of a desolate future come in the guise of the soothsaying of a shepherd, who prophesizes in a hypnotic state. Stay with me here.This is one of the most legendary of Herzog's films, known as the one where most of the actors were put in trances for most of the scenes. It hasn't been seen much, maybe since it isn't to the predilection of most people. There's no orthodox story, no conclusion, and the final scene is an allegory apparently not related to anything that's gone before. The movie's like a piece of music, where everything is understood in terms of tone and ambiance.Herzog's panorama has two shots from the tops of peaks, looking down over the earth and the ocean. The rest of the movie is set in a few houses, a beer hall, a glass factory, and in the forest engulfing the village. The people rely on the manufacture of rose- colored glassware. The head glassmaker Muhlbeck has died, taking with him the secret of the glass. Reckless attempts are made to retrieve the formula, but all blunder. A sensible person might say the factory can make other kinds of glass. But there are no sensible people around here.The dialogue the actors perform under Herzog's hypnosis is delivered with a barren conviction. It lacks energy and identity. What if what we're really hearing are Herzog's own inflections as he hypnotized them and told them what to say? Is he acting through them? These are not really characters, though they have idiosyncrasies. They're people who have had their spirit taken from them by the deterioration of their work. It's a bleak life, but it's a purpose.The survivor of a drunken free-fall from a hayloft waltzes despairingly with his friend's corpse. People drink and stare. In a particularly memorable scene, one guy breaks a beer stein over another guy's head, who doesn't react. Then, he unhurriedly pours his own beer over the first one's head, again yielding no reaction. You can feel what Herzog is driving at. In reality, you don't break a mug over someone's head without some apparent rationale, but that's gratuitous for Herzog's intentions. He shows the animal texture of the two men fighting. They need no explanation. They're devoid of motivation, to fight or to live. They've been rendered into shells of despondency and bitterness. Some imagery works fine without literal interpretation. Heart of Glass seems to me to be such a piece of work. We may not quite know what it makes us think, but we know how it makes us feel.

mstomaso 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.