Heart of Glass

Herz aus Glas

Herzog’s strange fable about an ailing pre-industrial community – complete with cast under hypnosis – is visually stunning and engagingly intense.

  • Director

    Werner Herzog

  • With

    Josef Bierbichler, Stefan Gütler, Clemens Scheitz

  • West Germany 1976. 94min

  • Digital

  • Certificate

    PG

  • English subtitles

Daringly different even by Herzog’s standards – the cast were hypnotised for every scene – this tells of a pre-industrial community falling apart when the formula for making the glass on which its economy depends is lost upon the factory-owner’s death. The acting is memorably intense, the imagery – inspired by the painter Georges de La Tour – remarkably beautiful, and the whole as resonant as myth.

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