FATA MORGANA
West Germany, 1970, 78 Minutes, Colour.
Directed by Werner Herzog.
Fata Morgana is an experimental film by Werner Herzog. Herzog made his mark in the 70s with many individualistic features and a commercial success with his adaptation and reworking of Murnau's Nosferatu. Herzog is frequently a subjective director and this is evident in this early film. He said he threw away the script and concentrated on the mirages - the Fata Morgana of mythology. Images and their meaning are important for Herzog: appearances and reality. There is a question - is there any reality behind appearances? The significance of appearances and response to the visual. The film is not as difficult as some other of Herzog's films although it requires constant attention, the suspension of the reasoning powers and an absorbing of image logic. The film has interest in its place in Herzog's work.
1. The work of Werner Herzog? His reputation, interests, cinema style, improvisation? His individualistic approach to the cinema? His interest in audience response - or not?
2. The significance of the title - its explanation? The importance of the mirage as a phenomenon? Herzog taking his crew to Africa to film the mirages? The Sahara as the desert of the world and its possibility for many mirages? The camera and the eye trying to see what is there and what is not there? Seeing more than what is there? The eye creating reality from the mirage? Seeing and not seeing? Appearances and reality? The importance of the visual and the response to it? Herzog's comment on visual realities? On the cinema as creating mirages? mirage as a basis for thematic treatment of reality?
3. The serious approach to the film, the serious tone? The impact of Part One? The repetitions, the commentary, the biblical overtones? The tracking, the importance of the editing? The move towards parody? Send-up? The inanity of poetic seriousness? Poetic inanity and laughing at it? Herzog himself and his laughter and mockery? The questions arising at the end - for whom was the film made, to what purpose?
4. The technical aspects of the film: colour photography, the various devices of filming the mirage? The experimental quality of the photography? The emphasis on special visual effects?
5. The significance of the commentary - real or not?
6. The choice of Africa for the location of the film - the variety of the terrains, the people? Africa being used by a European photographer -exploited, interpreted?
7. The focus on the people, letters, primitives, laughter? The role of scientists and observers, e.g. the turtles?
8. The music as background - atmosphere? The music of Leonard Cohen? Its relationship to the visual images?
9. The seriousness of the film? Subjective seriousness? The film accused of being pretentious? Intellectual and cultural pretensions? Imaginative and cinematic pretensions?
