ABSTRACT
Whether Werner Herzog, born Werner Stipetic, and his films are one remains to be seen, but it does seem striking that Herzog, possibly more than any other director of the New German Cinema, has been able to create a public persona embodying the same radical, visionary (some say) consequence displayed by his filmic subjects. Whatever other aesthetic merits Herzog's works may have, whether they be fiction features, documentaries (so-called), published books, scripts, or articles, the auteurist critic has few problems discerning consistent themes, images and structures, all gelling to a distinct personality. Yet Herzog has endeavored, also, to become himself a subject of his texts and those of others, to construct an image of his public and private life, which is totally consistent with his more consciously controlled au-teurship. Not without reason is a documentary about Herzog entitled I Am My Films: A Portrait of Werner Herzog(Wasichbin, sind meine Filme). A second documentary on and starring Herzog, Burden of Dreams, has also allowed the director plenty of room to re-create his own image. In this respect he resembles only his late colleague, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and to a lesser extent, Herbert Achternbusch, Werner Schroeter and Vlado Kristl. In contrast, such filmmakers as Wim Wenders, Alexander Kluge or Edgar Reitz are known to us almost exclusively through their films and theoretical texts, through the process of aesthetic reception. Indeed, to Herzog's advantage, critical reception of New German Cinema has tended to favor those directors who have brought their auteurial and biographical personas into close proximity, remnants of a bowdlerized auteur theory. Through the mass media, specifically the press and television, the public identifies each aspect of the director's constructed authorial image, resulting in their mutual reinforcement.
