The Films of Werner Herzog: Between Mirage and History

Given Herzog’s own pronouncement that ‘film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates,’ it is not surprising that his work has aroused ambivalent and contradictory responses. Visually and philosophically ambitious and at the same time provocatively eccentric, Herzog’s films have been greeted equally by extreme adulation and extreme condemnation.

Even as Herzog’s rebellious images have gained him a reputation as a master of the German New Wave, he has been attacked for indulging in a rom...