Heart of Glass

A glassworks in Bavaria in the eighteenth century. The town lives off a particular glass made there: a ruby red whose secret only the master knew. The master dies and leaves the formula to nobody. The works stops. The owner loses his mind and tries everything to find it. There is a herdsman in the town said to see ahead, and what he says points to the end of the place. Werner Herzog directs. What the film is known for is its method with the actors. Herzog worked with almost the entire cast under hypnosis; they played their scenes hypnotised, and the way they speak, look and move comes from that. Only the man playing the herdsman was kept outside it. The result is a strange texture: nobody speaks naturally and the narrative proceeds like a dream. The landscape passages were shot separately; the images of a sea of cloud and the mountains are the best known part. The subject is the loss of a piece of knowledge and how a community reacts to it; the film builds that as an apocalypse. The closing section breaks from the story and takes place somewhere else entirely. Who it is for: viewers who like Herzog and experimental narrative. Who it is not for: the acting method is unsettling, the pace is very slow, and the narrative cannot be followed.